Community online social media: Survey of Online Participation by school students

8/14/2019 Community online social media: Survey of Online Participation by school students

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Digital Butetown: Exploring Youth Access & Use of Digital Technology

CASEInsightReportKellyPage

DavidBarrie

JeremyGould

DIGITALBUTETOWN:

YouthAccess&UseofDigitalTechnology

J u l y 2 0 0 9


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Executive SummaryHow might the digital technologies bridge communities and network local life in a

collective way? This is a question raised by the Digital Butetown project.

As part of this project, this report explore the access to and use of digital

technologies by youth between the ages 11-19 who are currently schooled in theButetown catchment area.

KeyInsights:The results of the survey administered to a convenience sample of youth 11-19

years, reveals the following profile of youth in the cash-poor area of Butetown(Cardiff, UK).

Internet Home Access. 92% can access to the Internet/Web at home.

Length of Use at Home. 46% use the web on average for up to 1 hour a dayfrom home.

Community Access. 46% use local community access points (e.g., InternetCafs, Libraries).

Mobile Phone Use. Are heavy users of mobile technologies, especially for textmessaging (SMS).

Social Network Use. Use MSN, Bebo, Facebook and MySpace (amongst othersservices) to socially connect and chat with friends.

Number of Friends. As youth get older the number of members on their socialnetworking sites increase.

Favourite Websites. Rate YouTube, Friv, Google and Bebo as their favouritewebsites.

DigitalButetownDigital Butetown is a British Council Wales project and part of a larger, pan-European

initiative called OPENCities. It is supported by igloo Regeneration, an investment

fund managed by Aviva and described by the United Nations as "the world's firstsocially responsible property fund".

Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/digitalbutetown?hl=en


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Exploring Butetowns DigitalCommunity!

Butetown in Cardiff is home to 14,000 people and over forty-

six different nationalities. It may be cash poor - but it isculturally rich.

There are many dynamic members of the community working

together on renewal of the area and people keen to explore the

use and application of online tools, technologies and channels

as a way of sharing information, experience and supportinglocal initiatives.

Butetown has a Ning group, local people connect in Facebook

groups, kids play games against each other online and there'sbusy file-sharing of music.

Butdoesfragmentationof

onlinesocialnetworking

mirrorthefragmentationof

reallife?

Fragmentation between new and old communities, diverse

ethnic groups, communities of interest and different issues ofconcern.

If you believe in the power of communication and see the

online space as a place that could be socially useful and

productive, a few questions are raised:

How can such communities and existing online networkingbe connected and support the area, its existing and future

human relationships and social and economic progress?

How can we make digital participation work on a largespatial scale?

What are the online infrastructures that could enableexisting and future networks in the future?

Here we explore the use of digital technologies by youth in

Butetown to learn from the digital natives about their digitalcommunity activities?


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Youth in the UK are connectedmore than ever!

13-19 year olds are a web savvy demographic that wields

tremendous influence on peers, parents, societal trends andculture.

At this life stage young people make key decisions about their

identity, their friends and social networks, their educational

needs, their families and careers.

Their day-to-day schedule also undergoes transformation, from

the relative structure of school life, to the responsibility ofemployment and the relative freedom of post-secondaryeducation.

Youth are more connected than ever.

1319yearoldsaredigital

natives,supercommunicators

andmediasnackers1.

Butdoyouthincashpoor

areashavedifferentaccess

andusageprofiles?


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Accessing Youth in Butetown!To profile the social web usage behaviour of youth in

the Butetown area, over 1000 youth between the ages

of 11-19 were surveyed with the support of a localschool. The surveys were administered to aconvenience sample of pupils during class.

Weaskedyouthtotellus

abouttheirInternetaccess

andtheiruseofsocialweb

andmobiletechnologies.

Data collection took place in March 2009. Over 1300

surveys were distributed. A total of 1032 usablesurveys were completed with a response rate of 79%.

Preliminary response analysis shows that from the

participants who reported their age (n=956), 47% were

aged 13 years or below. This indicates a relatively

young overall sample. With an average of 14 years in

the sample, 21% were aged 12 years, 19% ages 13

years, 17% 14 years and a further 16% 15 years ofage.


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WheredoIlive?Of the sample surveyed, although the school might reside within the Butetown area,

pupils come from quite a wide catchment area consisting of over 25 areas across

Cardiff. The main areas represented in the sample (n=1028) include: Grangetown

(32%); Canton (23%); Riverside (22%) and Butetown (12%).

DoesaYouthDigitalDivideExist?Internet access is often used as proxy to measure and discuss the digital divide in

society the difference between those that have and those that dont have Internet

access. In essence, it is often falsely assumed that those from more cash-poor areas

do not have the same access profile to the Internet at home as users from morecash-rich areas.

In contrast, the results of this study show that 92% of the sample (n=1030) of youth

being schooled in the Butetown area can access the Internet at home. In fact, 46% of

the sample (n=959) accesses the Internet for up to 1 hour a day from home. Thisshows evidence of a heavy usage profile at home among 11-19 year olds who go to

school in the Butetown area.

In addition to accessing the Internet at home, 42% (n=433) indicated that they also

had access to the Internet from other sources or locations. Of these sources 19%

were strong-tie source (e.g., family and friends); 74% were weak-tie or institutional

sources (e.g., the local library, Internet caf, at school); and 7% used a combinationof the both, strong and weak tie sources.

These results reveal heavy use of the Internet from within sources in the wider

Butetown community area such as Internet cafes (Caf Click, Buzz), local library, andInternet facilities at school.


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Closer examination shows the distribution of these sources by age.

So what about mobile access?According to Youth Mobile in

2008, 52% of youth in the UK

aged, 5-9 had a mobile

phone, and among 10-14 year

olds this figure rose to close to85%6.

In the Butetown area, weidentified that 88% (n=1025)

of sample aged 11-19 had a

mobile phone, with mobile

phone ownership increasing

with age.

The results also show that

49% (n=892) of the sample

send over 50+ text messages

a month, and 55% (n=996)

have taken a photo with their

mobile phone. This shows ahigh mobile usage profile.


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Are Butetown Youth SociallyConnected Online!Nielsen (2009) commented in a report on Social Web Usage, that social networking

sites and chat functions are very important to youth, surpassing email use among

teens5. This is consistent for Butetown youth, with 43% having membership of MSN,26% Bebo, 22% Facebook and 9% MySpace.

Closer examination of the responses provides evidence of a weak but significant

positive correlation between a participants age and the number of friends they have

overall on social networking sites (r=0.150; p


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Favourite Websites!When asked to indicate their favourite web sites many participants opted out of this

question, with many indicating there was too many to mention. In fact over 30% of

the sample, reported more than one favourite website

Below is brief list of by Digital Butetown Youth Survey of the types of favourite

websites ranked in order of popularity. YouTube, Friv and Google are the mostmentioned favourite websites among 11-19 year olds in Butetown.

Website # % Website # %

You Tube 179 28.00% BBC 11 1.70%

Friv 113 17.70% Wikipedia 10 1.60%

Google 86 13.40% Yahoo.co.uk 4 0.60%

Bebo 76 11.90% Ebay 3 0.50%

Facebook 75 11.70% Hip Hop DS 2 0.30%

MSN 35 5.50% Hi5 2 0.30%

Hotmail 17 2.70% agames.com 2 0.30%

1. YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch andshare original videos worldwide through a Web experience.

2. Friv is a collection of flash games, all free and displayed on one page. Chooseamong 250 game titles to play with your friends.


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3. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine - an easy-

to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

Googles mission is to organise the worlds information.

Key Insights:The results of the survey administered to a convenience sample of youth 11-19

years, reveals the following profile of youth in the cash-poor area of Butetown

(Cardiff, UK).

Internet Home Access.92% can access the

Internet/Web at home.

Length of Use at Home.46% use the web on

average for up to 1 hour aday from home.

Community Access. 46%use local community access

points (e.g., Internet Cafs,Libraries).

Mobile Phone Use. Areheavy users of mobile technologies, especially for text messaging (SMS).

Social Network Use. Use MSN, Bebo, Facebook and MySpace (amongst othersservices) to socially connect and chat with friends.

Number of Friends. As youth get older the number of members on their socialnetworking sites increase.

Favourite Websites. Rate YouTube, Friv, Google and Bebo as their favouritewebsites.


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ENDNOTES

1. Page (2009) The Web Makes Me Feel: CASE Insight Report, MediaSnackers(July 2009). Access: www.twmmf.com

2. OfCom (2007) Digital Lifestyles & Media Literacy. August, 2007.www.ofcom.org.uk

3. ONS (2008) Internet Access 2008: Households and Individuals, Office of NationalStatistic (ONS), UK; August 2008. www.statistics.gov.uk

4. Nielsen (2009) How Teens Use Media, The Nielsen Company (USA), June 2009.www.nielsen.com

5. Nielsen (2009) Global Faces & Networked Places: Report on Social NetworksNew Global Footprint. The Nielsen Company, May, 2009 www.nielsen-online.com

6. Youth Mobile (2008) Mobile Youth Report. www.mobileyouth.org7. eMarketer (2008) UK Men Online. eMarketer Online Report. January 2009.

www.emarketer.com

8. Nielsen (2009) Nielsen Online Data Quick Take: Kids Online, The NielsenCompany: 6th July; www.nielsen-online.com

AUTHORS

Dr. Kelly Page | www.caseinsights.com

Kelly is an insight architect, who researchers digital market adoption, use and

usability and lectures at Cardiff Business School on Digital Marketing and MarketingResearch. Kelly is director of CASE Insights, a research initiative grounded on the

use of case methodologies and a social-system worldview. The core aim of the

initiative is to explore, document and share insights about Marketings evolution

through technology.

David Barrie | http://davidbarrie.typepad.com

David is an urban consultant, project, design and media producer based in London,

England. He creates and manages urban renewal projects for public and private

organisations. And he makes TV programmes for Channel 4 Television and the BBC.

Jeremy Gould | http://whitehallwebby.com/

Jeremy is a civil servant at a UK government department with responsibility for digital

media strategy. I lead a team of web professionals managing a portfolio of websites,

developing customer-centric online communication propositions, and using socialmedia tools to encourage online engagement.

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Community online social media: Survey of Online Participation by school students

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