[ecrea] CFP: Defining and Measuring Meaningful Broadband Adoption

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Call for Proposals
"Defining and Measuring Meaningful Broadband Adoption"
A workshop organized by the Open Technology Initiative at the New
America Foundation, Washington, DC

As government services, political discourse and commerce expand online,
policymakers and public interest organizations are promoting broadband
“adoption” among people who are not currently using the Internet, or
using it marginally. Yet there is little discussion of what “adoption”
means or how it can be measured. For lack of a better indicator,
agencies and researchers often use the metric of home subscription
numbers, which tell us very little about the different modes or
locations of access which may be more relevant for some populations, nor
about the effects of adoption on new users and communities.

In the United States, the absence of meaningful metrics for adoption is
becoming evident as two federal digital inclusion efforts -- the
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and Broadband
Initiatives Program (BIP) -- enter their evaluation phases. As
policymakers and advocates search for ways to document the effect of
these programs, the design of meaningful metrics could have implications
for the sustainability of broadband initiatives and the well-being of
individuals and communities identified as possible beneficiaries.

The Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation is calling
for proposals that address the question: “What is meaningful broadband
adoption, and how can we measure it?” Authors of successful proposals
will be invited for a day-long workshop at the New America Foundation in
Washington, DC, to present and discuss answers to this question. The
goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers from different
disciplinary traditions to discuss challenges in defining broadband
adoption and its effects, address issues of reliability and validity,
and present innovative methods for studying adoption. We welcome
proposals that reflect work-in-progress as well as completed studies. We
are especially interested in proposals that review recent broadband
adoption initiatives, including those outside of the United States.

For a full description of the workshop, please link here:
http://bit.ly/sPesqj

To submit a proposal, please link here: http://bit.ly/zv9grT

Schedule:

-Deadline for proposals: January 31, 2011

-Confirmation of receipt: Week of February 5, 2012

-Decision announced: March 2, 2012

-Deadline for submission of completed work/work-in-progress: March 30, 2012

-Workshop: April 11, 2012

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--
Seeta Peña Gangadharan, PhD
Visiting Fellow
Information Society Project
Yale Law School
p. +1.415.377.5069 | f. +1.815.346.2523

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