Residential consumers and 'rejected knowledge': Exploring and acknowledging the margins in broadband services in Australia

Telecommunications Policy

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 317-328

  Goggin, Gerard ^b   Newell, Christopher ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA   (Australia)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONSUMER KNOWLEDGE;

ENGINEERING RESEARCH; PUBLIC POLICY; TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES;

BROADBAND NETWORKS;

EID: 0031142629     PISSN: 03085961     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0308-5961(97)00012-8     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. Our use of the term 'residential consumers' can be explained as follows: the term is hardly unproblematic, especially given the changing nature of the technological systems under discussion. Further, the distinction between work carried out in places of business and consumers at home (residential consumers) will increasingly become blurred. The term 'residential consumers' is retained, however, because of the importance of recognizing distinct issues for consumers who lack the influence and control of corporate and business use, yet identify needs and aspirations which are not found in the dominant discourses of communications and information technologies (Goggin G and Newell C 'Reflections from the Roadside: Residential Consumers and the Information Superhighway' Media Information Australia 1994 74 November 40).
2. Telecom Australia changed its name to Telstra in 1995. It is a fully government owned telecommunications company, though the new Federal government elected in March 1996 intends to privatize one-third of Telstra.
3. Now the Telstra Consumer Consultative Council (TCCC). Established in 1989, the TCCC is an innovative forum for Telstra to consult with consumer and community groups on issues affecting residential consumers.
4. Adamson, L, et al Planning for an Information Society: Population Group Discussion Papers and Policy Issue Discussion Papers Telecom Australia and Melbourne (1994) ISBN: 0 64221363 1.
5. Elix, J and Lambert, J, Final Report: 'Have Your Say' National seminar series on Future Communications Technologies: Issues and Opportunities, Community Solutions, Fairlight, NSW, 1994.
6. After Elix and Lambert, Ibid, 11-17.
7. We follow the convention of using 'Deaf' to describe those who are part of the Australian Deaf community, which may be defined in socio-linguistic terms, and in Australia usually consists of those prelingually deaf and who use Australian Sign Language (Auslan) as their first language.
8. Lee, Hon M, Minister for Communications and the Arts, Telecommunications Policy Principles: Post 1997', Canberra, 31 July 1995.
9. See for example: Richards, E Vitamin C and Cancer MacMillan, London (1991); Newell, C The Social Construction of the Wheelchair and the Cochlear Implant: A Study of the Definition and Regulation of Disability Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, School of Social Inquiry, Deakin University, Geelong and Victoria (1994); Wallis, R, ed, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire (1979).
10. See for example: Richards, E Vitamin C and Cancer MacMillan, London (1991); Newell, C The Social Construction of the Wheelchair and the Cochlear Implant: A Study of the Definition and Regulation of Disability Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, School of Social Inquiry, Deakin University, Geelong and Victoria (1994); Wallis, R, ed, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire (1979).
11. See for example: Richards, E Vitamin C and Cancer MacMillan, London (1991); Newell, C The Social Construction of the Wheelchair and the Cochlear Implant: A Study of the Definition and Regulation of Disability Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, School of Social Inquiry, Deakin University, Geelong and Victoria (1994); Wallis, R, ed, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire (1979).
12. See Newell, Ibid.
13. Goggin, G and Newell, C op cit Ref 1.
14. For alternative accounts of the Australian 'broadband' policy exchanges, see a number of essays in 'Communication Futures in Australia', the special issue of Prometheus 14(1) 1996, and also in the special issue of Media Information Australia, 'Superhighway Blues', No 74, November 1994.
15. For alternative accounts of the Australian 'broadband' policy exchanges, see a number of essays in 'Communication Futures in Australia', the special issue of Prometheus 14(1) 1996, and also in the special issue of Media Information Australia, 'Superhighway Blues', No 74, November 1994.
16. For a discussion of the British policy experience see Goodwin, P, British media policy takes to the superhighway. Media, Culture and Society, 1995, 17, 677-689.
17. See Goggin and Newell, op cit Ref 1.
18. Broadband Services Expert Group Networking Australia's Future The Interim Report of the Broadband Services Expert Group, Canberra, July 1994.
19. Sless, D 'Between dreams and reality' Communication News (Communications Research Institute of Australia), 7.4 1994 1-7.
20. Patricia Gillard heads the Telecommunications Needs Research Group at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and was the only female member of BSEG. See, for instance, Gillard P, Wale K and Bow A 'Re-engineering telecommunications for the way people want to live: Social research in the design of new technologies' Prometheus 14.1 80-89. Gillard has chronicled her experiences on the BSEG in an illuminating discussion of the way broadband policy is constructed in her 'Not a woman within coo'ee. An encounter with cultural policy on the superhighway', in Alison Beale and A Van den Bosch (eds), Ghosts in the Machine. Women and Cultural Policy in Canada and Australia Hale and Iremonger, Toronto (1996).
21. Patricia Gillard heads the Telecommunications Needs Research Group at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and was the only female member of BSEG. See, for instance, Gillard P, Wale K and Bow A 'Re-engineering telecommunications for the way people want to live: Social research in the design of new technologies' Prometheus 14.1 80-89. Gillard has chronicled her experiences on the BSEG in an illuminating discussion of the way broadband policy is constructed in her 'Not a woman within coo'ee. An encounter with cultural policy on the superhighway', in Alison Beale and A Van den Bosch (eds), Ghosts in the Machine. Women and Cultural Policy in Canada and Australia Hale and Iremonger, Toronto (1996).
22. Broadband Services Expert Group, Networking Australia's Future, The Final Report of the Broadband Services Expert Group Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (1995).
23. Broadband Services Expert Group (1995), vi, 50.
24. National Information Service Council, Agenda papers from the first meeting of the Council, 10 August 1995, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (1995). Thanks to Irish Benson for this point.
25. The nature of such 'essential services' is, of course, contested knowledge.
26. Wilson, I R and Goggin, G, Reforming Universal Service: The Future of Consumer Access and Equity in Australian Telecommunications Consumers' Telecommunications Network, Sydney (1993).
27. Goggin, G and Milne, C, 'Literature review: residential consumers and Australian telecommunications 1991-94', in Consumers' Telecommunications Network For Whom the Phone Rings: Residential Consumers and Telecommunications Competition Consumers' Telecommunications Network, Sydney (1995) 28-9. The inaugural issue of Telecommunications Policy opens with an editorial by Lawrence H. Day expressing the hope that it will serve to bring together in an on-going dialogue policy researchers, on the one hand, and decision makers and policy analysts in government and industry, on the other. Day announces that "(s)pecial efforts will also be made to involve in the debate the groups of telecommunications users, industrial and governmental, in whose names many policy developments are undertaken. Users are seldom given adequate opportunity to express their views, and every effort must be made to guarantee their inclusion in this new forum" (Day, L H 'Telecommunications policy: teamwork' Telecommunications Policy 1(1) 1976 2). Unfortunately this statement does not acknowledge residential consumers as important end users of telecommunications, although hopefully we are better able, 20 years on, to make such distinctions.
28. Goggin, G and Milne, C, 'Literature review: residential consumers and Australian telecommunications 1991-94', in Consumers' Telecommunications Network For Whom the Phone Rings: Residential Consumers and Telecommunications Competition Consumers' Telecommunications Network, Sydney (1995) 28-9. The inaugural issue of Telecommunications Policy opens with an editorial by Lawrence H. Day expressing the hope that it will serve to bring together in an on-going dialogue policy researchers, on the one hand, and decision makers and policy analysts in government and industry, on the other. Day announces that "(s)pecial efforts will also be made to involve in the debate the groups of telecommunications users, industrial and governmental, in whose names many policy developments are undertaken. Users are seldom given adequate opportunity to express their views, and every effort must be made to guarantee their inclusion in this new forum" (Day, L H 'Telecommunications policy: teamwork' Telecommunications Policy 1(1) 1976 2). Unfortunately this statement does not acknowledge residential consumers as important end users of telecommunications, although hopefully we are better able, 20 years on, to make such distinctions.
29. Goggin, G and Milne, C, 'Literature review: residential consumers and Australian telecommunications 1991-94', in Consumers' Telecommunications Network For Whom the Phone Rings: Residential Consumers and Telecommunications Competition Consumers' Telecommunications Network, Sydney (1995) 28-9. The inaugural issue of Telecommunications Policy opens with an editorial by Lawrence H. Day expressing the hope that it will serve to bring together in an on-going dialogue policy researchers, on the one hand, and decision makers and policy analysts in government and industry, on the other. Day announces that "(s)pecial efforts will also be made to involve in the debate the groups of telecommunications users, industrial and governmental, in whose names many policy developments are undertaken. Users are seldom given adequate opportunity to express their views, and every effort must be made to guarantee their inclusion in this new forum" (Day, L H 'Telecommunications policy: teamwork' Telecommunications Policy 1(1) 1976 2). Unfortunately this statement does not acknowledge residential consumers as important end users of telecommunications, although hopefully we are better able, 20 years on, to make such distinctions.
30. Ibid, 29.
31. Silverstone R, Hirsch E and Morley D. Listening to a long conversation: an ethnographic approach to the study of information and communication technologies in the home. Cultural Studies 1991 5 204-227.
32. Silverstone et al, Ibid, 222.
33. Moyal A, The gendered use of the telephone: an Australian case study' Media, Culture and Society 1992 14 52. An associated article by Moyal is The feminine culture of the telephone: people, patterns and policy' Prometheus 1989 June 2.
34. Moyal A, The gendered use of the telephone: an Australian case study' Media, Culture and Society 1992 14 52. An associated article by Moyal is The feminine culture of the telephone: people, patterns and policy' Prometheus 1989 June 2.
35. See, for instance, Rowland, W D, American telecommunications policy research - Its contradictory origins and influences. Media Culture and Society, 1986, 8(2), 159-182 and The traditions of communication research and their implications for telecommunications study Journal of Communication 1993 43(3).
36. See, for instance, Rowland, W D, American telecommunications policy research - Its contradictory origins and influences. Media Culture and Society, 1986, 8(2), 159-182 and The traditions of communication research and their implications for telecommunications study Journal of Communication 1993 43(3).
37. Speck B W. 'Publication peer review: an annotated bibliography' Greenwood, Westport, C T (1993) cited in Hansen, K A. Bibliographies and scholarly communication'. Journal of Communication, 1994 4463.
38. Speck B W. 'Publication peer review: an annotated bibliography' Greenwood, Westport, C T (1993) cited in Hansen, K A. Bibliographies and scholarly communication'. Journal of Communication, 1994 4463.
39. A useful reference in this area is Rice, R E, Borgman, C L, Reeves, B, 'Citation networks of communication journals, 1977-1985: Cliques and positions, citations made and citations received' Human Communications Research 1988 15 256-283.
40. "Bibliometric studies have found that the subdivisions within the communications sciences generally do not communicate with one another, nor do they exchange theories or findings through cross-citation (Rice et al, Ibid)" (Hansen, op cit Ref 29, 54).
41. "Bibliometric studies have found that the subdivisions within the communications sciences generally do not communicate with one another, nor do they exchange theories or findings through cross-citation (Rice et al, Ibid)" (Hansen, op cit Ref 29, 54).
42. Moyal, A, 'Crisis in communications research' in Sless, D (ed) The Informationless Society: Papers from the Seminar Communication Research Press, Canberra (1995) p. 3.
43. There is considerable debate at the overlap between policy and research, and between administrative and critical research. See, for instance, Cunningham, S., Framing Culture: Criticism and Policy in Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney and also Rowland (1986) and (1993). Meaghan Morris suggests that "Australian cultural criticism, like Australian bureaucracy, does have a socially specific past. This is a small society, with a long tradition of circulating intellectuals between academic, media and bureaucratic work, between critical and policy functions" (Morris M. (1992), 'A gadfly bites back' Meanjin 51(3) (545).
44. There is considerable debate at the overlap between policy and research, and between administrative and critical research. See, for instance, Cunningham, S., Framing Culture: Criticism and Policy in Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney and also Rowland (1986) and (1993). Meaghan Morris suggests that "Australian cultural criticism, like Australian bureaucracy, does have a socially specific past. This is a small society, with a long tradition of circulating intellectuals between academic, media and bureaucratic work, between critical and policy functions" (Morris M. (1992), 'A gadfly bites back' Meanjin 51(3) (545).
45. Gillard, P 'What do we really want? Rethinking media and telephone user research' Media Information Australia 1994 74 32.
46. Consumers' Telecommunications Network, Voices in the Market: Consumer Consultation and Advocacy in an Era of Competition CTN, Sydney (1995).