the role of online social media in enhancing volunteer engagement

Kingston University London

“Social media can’t provide what social change has always required.

The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order

more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.”

Malcolm Gladwell

Date: 6th January 2012 Supervisor: Kent Springdal Author: Helen Jeffrey Student ID: K0852634 Word count: 19,997 This work is copyrighted to the author.

The role of online social media in enhancing volunteer engagement.

A case study on the use of online social media to support the campaign for Next Generation Access broadband services to rural communities in the Eden Valley in

Cumbria; both a Big Society Vanguard area and Broadband Delivery UK Pilot.


Copyright © 2012 Page 1 of 175

Abstract The UK government have stated that the UK should have the best superfast

broadband network in Europe by 2015. There are areas of the UK, rural, remote

and sparsely populated, where broadband is currently poor, unreliable or non-

existent. The government have allocated £530 million to help achieve this aim.

Four rural ‘superfast pilot’ projects have been set-up to explore how to effectively

deliver broadband into rural areas where it may not be commercially viable.

Cumbria is one of the pilot areas. The Eden Valley in Cumbria is also a Big Society

Vanguard area; a test-bed for increased power and responsibility being held locally

within communities.

To further the campaign for improved rural broadband in Cumbria a community

website, broadbandcumbria.com, was set up in December 2010 providing online

social media tools to help local communities come together and develop their plans

for improving local broadband. This study explores the role of online social media

in enhancing volunteer engagement using a case study approach focusing on the

broadbandcumbria.com online community.

This is a relatively new research area. A broad, deep set of data from different

sources was collected and used to examine in detail the activity, behaviour,

opinions, perception and experiences of members of the online community and

users of the website. The literature, whilst providing a number of related themes

and frameworks, did not provide a prescriptive theoretical model to replicate, but

instead gave a valuable sense of direction for the research.

The online community show many positive predictors for online engagement and

are highly participatory offline. They use social media and communicate widely

online. The perception of the community is that the website has had a positive

impact on the campaign for broadband in the Eden Valley, and individuals feel that

the website has enhanced the campaign.

It is recommended that additional case studies exploring similar online communities

would be useful in helping to develop models that are more generalisable.



Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to thank:

• My family and friends for their patience and support over the last year.

• My supervisor Kent Springdal who has been supportive throughout my

project.

• The people who gave up their time to be interviewed, and those who took

the time to complete the questionnaire.

• Louis Mosley for supporting my research project and allowing access to

archival data.

• Mike Kiely for his vision.

• The community campaigning for rural broadband, particularly those of the

Eden Valley, who have always been warm, welcoming, and inspirational.



Table of Contents

Table of Contents 3

1 Introduction 6

2 Context 7

2.1 What is the story so far? .......................................................................................... 7

2.2 Commercial/Technological Context ......................................................................... 9

2.3 The Changing Relationship Between Citizen and State ........................................... 9

2.4 Broadband Cumbria Website ..................................................................................11

2.5 Summary: So what is the problem? ........................................................................12

3 Literature Review 14

3.1 Overview ................................................................................................................14

3.2 Volunteer Engagement ...........................................................................................15

3.3 How is Volunteer Engagement measured? .............................................................16

3.4 What is Engagement? ............................................................................................20

3.5 Online Social Media ................................................................................................21

3.6 What are Online Social Media? ...............................................................................22

3.7 How is the impact of online social media evaluated? ..............................................25

3.8 Who uses online social media? ...............................................................................28

3.9 Online social media and volunteer engagement......................................................30

3.10 Cumbria and the Eden Valley ...............................................................................32

3.11 Evaluation and Summary ......................................................................................35

4 Aims and Research Questions 40

4.1 Overview ................................................................................................................40

4.2 Research Objective ................................................................................................41

4.3 Research Questions ...............................................................................................41

5 Research Design Methodology 43

5.1 Overview ................................................................................................................43

5.2 Research Philosophy ..............................................................................................43

5.3 Research Approach ................................................................................................44

5.4 Research Strategy ..................................................................................................45

5.5 Research Paradigm ................................................................................................45

5.6 Data Collection Methods .........................................................................................46

Archival Data ................................................................................................................46

Small-scale Questionnaire ............................................................................................47



Interviews .....................................................................................................................49

5.7 Ethical/Privacy Considerations ................................................................................50

5.8 Limitations ..............................................................................................................50

5.9 Summary ................................................................................................................52

6 Results 53

6.1 Archival Data ..........................................................................................................54

6.2 Small-Scale Questionnaire Data .............................................................................62

6.3 Interview Data .........................................................................................................67

6.4 Summary ................................................................................................................77

7 Discussion 78

8 Conclusions 87

9 Bibliography and References 89

Appendices

Appendix A Maps

Appendix B The Eden Declaration

Appendix C Google Analytics Data

Appendix D Wordpress Data

Appendix E Small-Scale Online Questionnairre Questions

Appendix F Small-Scale Online Questionnairre Results

Appendix G Semi-Structured Interviews Proforma

Appendix H Semi-Structured Interviews Transcripts

List of Figures Figure 2-1 Eden Valley In Context ........................................................................... 8

Figure 2-2 Old Paradigm ....................................................................................... 10

Figure 2-3 New Paradigm ...................................................................................... 10

Figure 2-4 A conceptualisation of data as a bridge between communities and local government. .......................................................................................................... 11

Figure 2-5 Broadband Cumbria Website Homepage.............................................. 12

Figure 3-1 Project keywords graphic produced using www.wordle.com ................. 14

Figure 3-2 A summary of some of the key developments and drivers affecting participation ........................................................................................................... 16

Figure 3-3 A Cultural Map, Source: Inglehart (2005) .............................................. 17

Figure 3-4 Ladder of Participation .......................................................................... 20

Figure 3-5 The Conversation Prism ....................................................................... 23

Figure 3-6 Classification of Social Media by social presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure ............................................................................ 24

Figure 3-7 The Rule of Participation Inequality ...................................................... 25

Figure 3-8 How good would you say your organisation is at measuring return on investment (ROI) from social media activity? ......................................................... 26

Figure 3-9 ‘Social Technographics’ typography ..................................................... 27

Figure 3-10 Online Community Life Cycle .............................................................. 28



Figure 3-11 Online Behaviour of EU Countries ...................................................... 29

Figure 3-12 Social Influence: reach vs affinity ........................................................ 31

Figure 3-13 Citizen-led Local Online Ecosystem Overview: High level model ........ 32

Figure 3-14 Cumbrian websites by Type ................................................................ 34

Figure 3-15 Cumbrian websites by Campaign ....................................................... 34

Figure 3-16 A conceptualisation of the individual as an engaged actor in different contexts ................................................................................................................. 35

Figure 3-17 Ingleheart’s Cultural Mapping Overlaid on the European Commission’s Internet Activity by Country Data ............................................................................ 38

Figure 4-1 Conceptual mapping of the use of online social media in terms of levels of volunteer engagement ....................................................................................... 42

Figure 5-1 A conceptualisation of the Pragmatist approach ................................... 43

Figure 5-2 A conceptualisation of the Research Approach..................................... 45

Figure 5-3 A conceptualisation of the Data Collection Sources .............................. 46

Figure 6-1 Visits per month Source: Google Analytics ........................................... 55

Figure 6-2 Analysis of Sources of Visits Source: Google Analytics Data ................ 56

Figure 6-3 Twitter Account Page Source: Twitter.com ........................................... 57

Figure 6-4 Facebook Account Page Source: Facebook.com ................................. 58

Figure 6-5 Facebook Insights ................................................................................ 58

Figure 6-6 Activity analysis .................................................................................... 59

Figure 6-7 Activity analysis by type ........................................................................ 60

Figure 6-8 Blog Posts per Member ........................................................................ 61

Figure 6-9 Blog Comments per Member ................................................................ 61

Figure 6-10 Word-cloud representation of all blog comments ................................ 62

Figure 6-11 Reach: Number of people communicated with online ......................... 65

Figure 6-12 A example of the transcript analysis process ...................................... 68

Figure 6-13 Word-cloud frequency representations of the interview transcripts ..... 69

Figure 7-1 Conceptual mapping of the use of online social media in terms of levels of volunteer engagement, including the broadbandcumbria.com website .............. 84

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Individual, Social and Political Participation ............................................ 15

Table 3.2 Levels of civic engagement .................................................................... 18

Table 3.3 Typical participants in activities .............................................................. 19

Table 3.4 Three dimensions of psychological empowerment ................................. 21

Table 3.5 Categories of Content and Online Behaviour ......................................... 33

Table 3.6 Summary of Participation as explored in this literature review ................ 36

Table 6.1 Results for Individual, Social and Political Participation .......................... 64

Table 6.2 Interview Subjects Summary .................................................................. 67

Table 6.3 Selected responses to interview questions ............................................. 70

Table 6.4 Selection of unexpected and strongly felt interview extracts ................... 75



1 Introduction

Towards the end of 2010 in the USA a public debate ignited in the media between

Malcolm Gladwell and Clay Shirky on the potential for social media to affect social

change (Gladwell 2010, Shirky 2011). This project proposal is a direct result of that

debate.

Gladwell (2010) disputes the suggestion that “with Facebook and Twitter and the

like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been

upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give

voice to their concerns” and concludes that the ‘weak’ ties of online social networks

are unlikely to support change that has any significant impact.

Although this project proposal does not explore the overthrow of governments and

authoritarian regimes, but instead focuses on a small rural area of the UK, in many

ways the social, political, and technological outcomes of the struggle for rural

broadband are quietly revolutionary.

The issues are still playing out, the story is ongoing: if online social media are

playing a part, how significant is it?

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” Niccolo Machiavelli



2 Context

2.1 What is the story so far?

The Eden Valley in rural Cumbria is both a Vanguard area for the Big Society

(announced 19 July 2010) and in one of the original four Broadband Delivery UK

(BDUK) rural Broadband Pilot areas (announced 20 October 2010). As such there

are a number of interested and involved parties with different agendas to be

considered. Figure 2-1 is an attempt to summarise the context; many eyes are

focused on the Eden Valley. A map showing the location of Cumbria and the Eden

Valley is included in Appendix A.

The Big Society Vanguard areas are an initiative of the Department for

Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and part of the government’s drive to

support localism. BDUK is a department within the Department of Culture, Media

and Sport (DCMS), created to deliver the government’s broadband strategy:

“Broadband is one of our top priorities. We took office earlier this year with a clear

vision of what we want for Britain – we should have the best superfast broadband

network in Europe by 2015.” (Broadband Delivery UK, 2010). Both, then, are

manifestations of central government.

The Eden District is the only rural vanguard area and includes 31 parishes in three

groups: Upper Eden, Lyvynnet Valley, and the Heart of Eden. The Eden District

has a very low population density with less than 99 people per square kilometre in

2009 (ONS). Each group has a community plan that addresses local needs and

priorities. The boundaries of the local districts and parishes are shown on a map in

Appendix A. The Upper Eden District’s community plan (UECP)1 (Kirkby Stephen

Town Council 2011) is a key element of the Big Society Vanguard focus in the Eden

Valley; the approaches and energies of local communities are being taken as ‘role

models’ for effective community engagement elsewhere. There is an intention to

use the UECP to identify legislative blockers, planning issues, and other barriers

communities face when championing their own projects.

1 http://www.kirkby-stephen.com/upper-eden-community-plan.html



Figure 2-1 Eden Valley In Context

Similarly, the BDUK Broadband Pilot is intended to highlight and focus attention on

barriers (legislative, regulatory, technical and commercial) to the provision of super-

fast broadband to rural communities. Responsibility for commissioning of

broadband services lies with Cumbria County Council.

In terms of online social media the Broadband Cumbria community website2 is

educating, supporting, and engaging local communities with the project (Cumbria

Broadband Rural & Community Projects Ltd 2011). The website has provoked a

vigorous debate over many options and issues. A number of local Broadband

Champions have been appointed and great energy is being harnessed within

communities to drive change. The Eden Declaration web-page (see Appendix B) is

a testament to the commitment of the communities.

2 www.broadbandcumbria.com

The UK’s Rural European Match Funding Internet Delivered Services “Final 2/5ths” Digital Agenda for Europe Hyper-connected applications FFTH Council of Europe Hyper-connected Cumbria County Council communities research Hub co-ordinators Eden District Council Parish Councils EDEN VALLEY D C M S Big Society Digital Britain BDUK Broadband Pilot Race Online Big Society Bank Big Society Vanguard BIS UK Online Big Society Network Britain’s Superfast Communities BDUK Broadband Future NESTA Participatory & Broadband Budgeting Champions Rural Broadband Pilots OpenData OFCOM Telecomms Companies D C L G APPGs EURIM (ICT) & DeAct Big Society Vanguard Areas Independent & New Build Installers Barrier Busting Localism Digital Scotland / Digital Wales Community Installations VOA Grassroots activists for NGA/FTTH INCA BSG Nominet Trust JON ISPA



The key question as to whether it is possible to transform community engagement,

knowledge, and commitment into concrete technical and budgetary decisions

remains to be answered.

In the face of cuts to budgets and services, budget-holders’ attention is turning to

more engagement with citizens in terms of the tough decisions to be made, as well

as increasing delivery of services over the internet. As defined by Bowers and

Blunt (2010), the BDUK Pilot project can be considered an example of ‘participatory

budgeting’. Also, according to Bowers and Blunt (2010), “local authorities in some

places have already launched e-participatory budgeting processes,” and several

examples are given (Bristol, Redbridge, Croydon).

2.2 Commercial/Technological Context

Anecdotally the UK telecoms industry can be perceived as ‘corrupt’, or at the very

least beset by vested interests, with the regulator Ofcom often described as too

close to the existing big players to be effective. The anxiety articulated online by

some members of the local Eden communities, and others, suggests a concern that

‘big business’ will cash in on the Pilot projects, as a loss-leader for the £530m

potentially available (and possible European match finding), and they will end up

with a less than optimal technical solution. The wider implications of decisions

made by the Pilot projects for the UK as a whole are significant.

BDUK (2010) have committed to providing an “overall strategic steer” and to

seeking “the most efficient way to ensure public or community investment is spent

on solutions that are future proofed and which are able to connect to national

infrastructure”.

There is also a powerful opportunity to allow communities to push demand for new

products, and to put pressure on suppliers to provide new solutions that match the

communities’ ambitions for superfast broadband, upgradability, and extendibility.

2.3 The Changing Relationship Between Citizen and State With the advent of the ‘Big Society’ the relationship between citizen and state is

evolving. Empowerment of local government and parish councils, direct

engagement with communities and community solutions are aspects of this

evolution. This is conceptualised in a simple way in Figure 2-2 and Figure 2-3.



Figure 2-2 Old Paradigm

In this model, Parish Councils are marginalised, without legal or financial power.

Central Government and Local Authorities are large. Central Government drives

much of the agenda for Local Authorities. The community is disengaged from all

levels of government.

Figure 2-3 New Paradigm

Local Authorities Central Government Parish Councils NGOs & Pressure Groups Community

Community Local Government Central Government



In the new model Local Government, including Parish Councils, is empowered.

Central Government plays a reduced role with less ‘micro-managing’. Communities

are directly connected to all levels of government and play a larger part in shaping

services.

Although the new paradigm seems much simpler, the old cultures and norms of

working, however maligned, were well established. There is now a need to build

trust, confidence, and new methods of working together. This is particularly an

issue where budget-holders are being encouraged to devolve decision making to

communities and put trust in volunteers.

Alongside these shifts, there is growing confidence in the creative use of data and a

widening understanding of the potential value of data, conceptualised in Figure 2-4.

The Government’s Open Data policy is opening up new sources of data for

analysis. Recently announced by the Cabinet Office (2011), the new Public Data

Corporation3 is intended to help drive innovation. The use of Mapping/GIS is

growing. Tools for using data are becoming easier to use and more widespread.

Data is no longer restricted to cumbersome, expensive, IT developments; agile

methodologies are gaining acceptance.

Figure 2-4 A conceptualisation of data as a bridge between communities and local government.

2.4 Broadband Cumbria Website

The main focus of online social media in terms of engaging the rural communities of

Cumbria in the rural broadband issue is the ‘Broadband Cumbria’ website4

(Cumbria Broadband Rural & Community Projects Ltd 2011), with an associated

3 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/public-data-corporation-free-public-data-

and-drive-innovation

4 www.broadbandcumbria.com

Communities Local Government Energy, manpower, ideas Data giving Under pressure No legitimacy to make decisions confidence and Responsible for decisions Able to gather data bridging the gap Comfortable using data Want to see progress Need to monitor progress



Facebook page5 and twitter account (@bbcumbria) used in support: A screen print

of the homepage is given in Figure 2-5.

The website was built using the popular WordPress application (free) and the

BuddyPress plug-in (also free) and provides a number of social media facilities

including blogging, commenting, membership, forums/groups, and micro-sites.

Figure 2-5 Broadband Cumbria Website Homepage

Source: Cumbria Broadband Rural & Community Projects Ltd (2011)

The website also hosts the ‘Eden Declaration’ (see Appendix B), and other crowd-

sourced content, such as a broadband glossary, help notes, and map information.

2.5 Summary: So what is the problem?

Considering the complex context described in previous sections, some questions

5 http://www.facebook.com/BroadbandCumbria



that arise are: to what can extent online social media be effective in supporting

change, particularly in an area that has limited internet connectivity? Is the

potentially strong social cohesiveness of smaller rural communities contributing to

making online social media more effective? Is the combination of communities of

interest and geographical communities a potent one? Alternatively, do the existing

connections within a rural community render the online community more or less

redundant?

There is a certain irony in attempting to use online social media in an area where

broadband connections are poor or non-existent. The issues that are being raised

involve complex technical concepts, but there is much to be gained for individuals,

communities, and businesses. What can be learned from Eden Valley that could be

applied in other rural communities and what does success look like?

In terms of online social media enhancing volunteer engagement, what actions

have been taken following exposure to social media, both online and offline?

The digital world is recognised as significant in the modern economic environment,

accounting for almost £1 in every £10 produced by the British economy (Digital

Britain, 2009), but almost one third of the UK has poor or non-existing internet

connectivity (BDUK, 2010). This is particularly the case in rural areas where

investment costs are relatively high and the number of customers low.

If online social media can be used effectively to stimulate communities to drive

progress there is potentially much to be gained.



3 Literature Review

3.1 Overview

In this nascent and evolving area, the literature review provides a broad framework

of understanding that informs the research design and methodology, extending and

deepening the themes and issues identified during the project proposal phase. As

this is an exploratory research topic, not explanatory one, the literature provides

general directions for development, rather than prescriptive approaches.

The literature review has the following objectives:

• To discover how the main topics, online social media and volunteer

engagement, have been approached by previous researchers and subject

experts.

• To understand the accepted rationales for assessing and measuring the

effectiveness of online social media and volunteer engagement.

• To identify a number of theoretical models and frameworks that may apply

or could be adapted.

• To identify and include the most up-to-date work.

A graphic representation of the main keywords identified are presented in Figure 3-

1.

Figure 3-1 Project keywords graphic produced using www.wordle.com

“The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight“ Samuel McChord Crothers



The literature review is presented in the following sections:

• Volunteer Engagement

• How is Volunteer Engagement measured?

• What is Engagement?

• Online Social Media

• What are Online Social Media?

• How is the impact of online social media evaluated?

• Who uses online social media?

• Online social media and volunteer engagement

• Cumbria and the Eden Valley

3.2 Volunteer Engagement In order to examine the meaning of the concept of ‘Volunteer engagement’, it

seems logical to explore how it has been researched in the past. Volunteer

engagement can be considered an indicator of ‘citizen participation’, so this is a

useful place to start.

A comprehensive study of literature related to participation has been carried out by

Brodie et al (2009) as “part of a major national research project called ‘Pathways

through Participation: What creates and sustains active citizenship?’ led by the

National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) in partnership with the

Institute for Volunteering Research (IVR) and Involve.” The review discusses the

difficulties inherent in working with the wide range, or continuum, of varieties of

participation and suggests distilling them into three generic categories: Individual,

Social and Political, as summarised in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 Individual, Social and Political Participation

Source: Adapted from Brodie et al (2009)

Individual Participation

Social Participation

Political Participation

Description

The choices and actions that individuals make as part of their daily life.

The collective activities that individuals may be involved in as part of their everyday lives.

The engagement of individuals with the various structures and institutions of democracy.

Includes

‘Everyday politics’ ‘Associational life’, collective action, civil, horizontal or community participation.

Political, civic, or vertical participation and/or participatory governance.

Examples

Choosing fair-trade goods; boycotting specific products; using ‘green energy’; donating money to charities; and signing petitions.

Being a member of a community group, a tenants’ association or a trade union; supporting the local hospice by volunteering; and running a study group on behalf of a faith organisation.

Voting in local or national elections; being a councillor; and taking part in government (or associated) consultations.



Brodie et al. (2009) conclude that “participation has a rich history in political and

social thought, and continues to be a preoccupation of governments, policy makers,

practitioners, academics and interested individuals across the world,” and present a

summary of some of the key developments and drivers affecting participation as

shown in Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2 A summary of some of the key developments and drivers affecting participation

Source: Brodie et al. (2009)

3.3 How is Volunteer Engagement measured?

Volunteer engagement could also be considered as a measure of social capital.

Halpern’s (2005) multi-national analysis of trends in social capital from the mid

1990s, drawing in part on the work of Putnam and Inglehart, identifies two key

stories.

The first is the decline of many traditional forms of social capital such as

engagement with religious and political organisations, and a rise in ‘memberships’

that do not include social interactions, together with an increase in individualism



and an expansion of weak social ties, or networks. Halpern suggests that “this

represents a shift from the ‘thick-trust’ of the traditional community to the ‘thin’ but

powerful trust of modern society”.

The second story identified by Halpern (2005) is that in the Anglo-Saxon nations

(USA, UK, Australia) there had been a generalised rise in individualism and social

disengagement that, in the case of the USA, is potentially explained by work

intensification, suburbanisation, and mass media (television and electronic

entertainment).

Inglehart (2005) presents a cultural map based not on geographical proximity, but

on shared values and attitudes (see Figure 3-3), drawing on the results of the World

Values Survey. Inglehart suggest that as societies move from a position of Survival

to Self-expression, from Industrial to Post-industrial, there is a related shift from

Materialist to Post-materialist values and that “societies that rank high on self-

expression values also tend to rank high on interpersonal trust”. Britain is grouped

culturally with the USA, rather than with its geographically closer European

neighbours.

Figure 3-3 A Cultural Map, Source: Inglehart (2005)



A recent study by the NCVO (2011) into UK participation draws together a wide

range of figures from many sources and gives a useful overview of trends in

participation in the UK, including volunteering.

The report compares levels of ‘formal’ volunteering in 1981 and 2008 and

concludes they are broadly unchanged. The measures are in terms of percentage

of individuals volunteering formally through groups and organisations at least once

a year (falling from 44% to 41%) and household giving as a percentage of total

household spending (0.4%).

The Citizen Survey (CLG, 2010) (a household survey in England and Wales

involving 16,140 face-to-face interviews) defines informal volunteering as “giving

unpaid help as an individual to people who are not relatives”. In 2009-10 54% of

people in England volunteered informally at least once in the previous year. This

represents a drop from 64% in 2001.

The Citizen Survey (CLG, 2010) also reports that levels of involvement in civic

participation are lower at 34% (38% in 2001) and involvement in civic consultation

was also lower at 18% (between 20 and 21% previously). Levels of civic activism

remain static at 10%. The definitions of levels of civic engagement are summarised

in Table 3.2.

Table 3.2 Levels of civic engagement

Source: Adapted from CLG ( 2010)

Civic Engagement

Civic participation: wider forms of engagement in democratic processes, such as contacting an elected representative, taking part in a public demonstration or protest, or signing a petition.

Civic consultation: active engagement in consultation about local services or issues such as attending a consultation group or completing a questionnaire about these services.

Civic activism: involvement either in direct decision-making about local services or issues, or in the actual provision of these services by taking on a role such as a local councillor, school governor or magistrate.

The Citizen Survey represents a professional and well resourced data collection

process, but it could be argued that, as a measure of engagement, volunteering ‘at

least once a year’ is relatively crude.



Brodie et al. (2009) also examine in detail the available evidence regarding the

‘typical’ participant/volunteer in relation to a number of different activities,

summarised in Table 3.3, based on indicators including age, socio-economic status,

education and life-stage. The study comments on the ‘snapshot’ nature of the

existing data and the lack of work focusing on the holistic view of an individual’s

progress through different stages and levels of participation.

Table 3.3 Typical participants in activities Source: Adapted from Brodie et al. (2009)

The voter/traditional public participant White, aged 65 and above, middle-class, professional higher earners, both men and women.

Local-level public participant (for example, attending consultation groups/meetings, completing questionnaire about issues such as town planning, health, transport or the environment)

The typical participants vary according to activity, but generally are more likely to be white, older, better educated, richer, middle-class males. Those living in rural areas have been identified as more likely to engage in civic consultation exercises.

The online public participant Well-educated, and from a marginally higher social grade and both male or female.

The formal volunteer (for example, the prison visitor, the conservation volunteer, the charity shop volunteer, the school governor, the local magistrate)

Women, of higher social grades, in managerial positions, degree-educated, and middle-aged. There are, however, differences across different types of formal volunteering.

Figure 3-4 is a representation of the ‘ladder of participation’ typology suggested by

Arnstein (1969) who defines eight levels of engagement in the civic context, with

only levels six to eight representing true citizen empowerment.



Figure 3-4 Ladder of Participation Source: Arnstein (1969)

3.4 What is Engagement? Engagement can also be examined from the perspectives of ‘employee

engagement’. It is interesting to consider what might be applicable to volunteer

engagement from the work done from this perspective, particularly given the recent

thinking that volunteer work can enhance employment and career prospects.

A number of factors influence employee engagement (Armstrong, 2008), and these

can be considered as falling into two areas, the rational and the emotional.

Intrinsic motivation and engagement is enhanced by interesting or challenging

work, autonomy, responsibility, the opportunity to develop skills and abilities, and

access to required resources. Armstrong (2008) also cites the work of Robinson

and the Institute of Employment Studies when suggesting an engaged employee

displays the attributes summarised below:

• Has a positive attitude to the job

• Identifies with the organisation

• Actively works towards improvements



• Shows respect for and co-operation with others

• Can be relied upon and goes beyond expectations

• Sees the bigger picture

• Keeps up to date

• Seeks opportunities to improve organisational performance

Empowerment of the individual, or psychological empowerment, is considered by

Leung (2009) in his study of the user-generated content online and civic

engagement offline. Leung identifies three dimensions of psychological

empowerment as potential indicators of levels of user-generated content online,

summarised in Table 3.4.

Considering ‘engagement’ in terms of participation, Brodie et al (2011) in their

‘Pathways to Participation’ final report conclude that all types of participation have a

number of common features; voluntary, about action, collective or connected, and

purposeful.

Table 3.4 Three dimensions of psychological empowerment

Source: Based on Leung (2009)

Control Self-efficacy Competence

Perceived intrapersonal

capacity to lead and

influence social and political

systems

Perception of skills.

Knowledge about the

availability of resources

needed to achieve goals,

development of decision-

making skills.

Role-mastery.

Includes participation in

activities and community

organisations.

3.5 Online Social Media As illustrated in Figure 3-5, the ‘conversation prism’ by Soulis and Thomas (2008),

online social media can been seen to comprise a highly varied and complex range

of software applications: “The Conversation Prism gives you a whole view of the

social media universe, categorized and also organized by how people use each

network.” This is the third version to be produced reflecting the rapidly evolving

nature of social media.



3.6 What are Online Social Media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) consider that there is a limited understanding of what

the term ‘‘Social Media’’ exactly means, and continue to provide a classification

framework that defines more specific categories: collaborative projects, blogs,

content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social

worlds. The six types of social media are classified according to the level of self-

presentation or self-disclosure, and social presence or media richness, which

predicate the social media label as shown in Figure 3-6.



Figure 3-5 The Conversation Prism Source: Soulis and Thomas (2008)



Figure 3-6 Classification of Social Media by social presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure Source: Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)

Preece (2000) defines an online community as consisting of four elements: people,

shared purpose, policies or norms, and computer systems.

Chaffey and Smith (2008) acknowledge the ideas of Durlacher in that there are a

number of different types of ‘virtual’ or online community, including communities

related to purpose (for example buying a car), position (for example life stage),

interest, and profession.

Li and Bernhoff (2008) present the concept of ‘groundswell’ as “a social trend in

which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather

than from traditional institutions like corporations”.

Kurpius, Metzgar and Rowley (2010), in their examination of 10 case studies

relating to commercial hyperlocal media ventures in the USA, describe online

hyperlocal media operations as those that “focus on specific issues or communities,

but they vary widely in the type and reliability of funding that support their

operations; the training, expertise, and size of their staffs; and their ability to attract

an audience”.

On his blog Bradley (2011) builds on his analysis of 200 implementations of social

media in the commercial environment and concludes that online social media

implementations must include ‘mass-collaboration’ and ‘purpose’, as well as his six

original core principles: participation, collective, transparency, independence,

persistence and emergence.



The concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ is explored by Brabham (2008) who examines a

number of case studies and concludes that crowdsourcing “is a model capable of

aggregating talent, leveraging ingenuity while reducing the costs and time formerly

needed to solve problems,” and “crowdsourcing is enabled only through the

technology of the web, which is a creative mode of user interactivity, not merely a

medium between messages and people”.

3.7 How is the impact of online social media evaluated? From the commercial perspective Chaffy and Smith (2008) consider the growth and

impact of online social networks on media consumption as the most dramatic trend.

The challenge of encouraging online community participation is acknowledged.

Neilsen (2006) proposed a ‘90-9-1 rule of participation inequality’ (see Figure 3-7).

This rule predicts that 90% of a community simply observe, 9% contribute

periodically, and 1% create most of the contributions.

Figure 3-7 The Rule of Participation Inequality Source: Neilsen (2006)

Again from the commercial perspective, based on work done by Econsultancy

(2010), it seems that only 15% of companies rate their measure of return on

investment in social media as good or excellent, as shown in Figure 3-8.



Figure 3-8 How good would you say your organisation is at measuring return on investment (ROI) from social media activity?

Source: Econsultancy (2010)

Figure 3-9 shows Bernhoff’s (2010) updated version of the ‘Social Technographics’

typography that was developed originally with Li. This is a commercial profiling tool

that reflects the fact that “people participate in multiple behaviours, and not

everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower

rungs”. Interestingly the ‘conversationalists’ classification is determined by

frequency of participation as well as by type of behaviour.



Figure 3-9 ‘Social Technographics’ typography Source: Bernhoff (2010)

Iriberri & Gondy (2009) use the framework of a life-cycle to study the distinctive

stages of an online community. The study found that measures of success

commonly used are the volume of members’ contributions and the quality of the

relationships among members. The authors present the online community as an

evolving entity progressing through distinctive stages, with success strategies

dependant on the developmental stage as well as the goals of the specific

community, as illustrated in Figure 3-10. The benefits of an integrated approach

are seen as lively and sustainable online communities with members participating

willingly and contributing actively.



Figure 3-10 Online Community Life Cycle Source: Iriberri & Gondy (2009)

3.8 Who uses online social media? Data presented by the European Commission (2011) shown in Figure 3-11

compares the online behaviour of the population of different EU countries. The UK

is shown to have a population where almost 80% are ‘regular’ internet users, with

over 30% of the population uploading self-created content to be shared. The UK

scored higher than the average of the 27 EU countries in both respects.



Figure 3-11 Online Behaviour of EU Countries Source: European Commission (2011)



Correa, Hinsley & Gil de Zuniga (2010) consider personality traits as critical factors

impacting an individual’s engagement with user-generated online media. Using a

large scale survey of adults in the United States to explore a number of hypotheses,

the study concluded that extraversion and openness to new experiences were

positively related to social media use, whereas emotional stability was a negative

predictor. The results differed by gender and age; extravert men and women were

likely to be more frequent users, but only men with greater emotional instability

were likely to be frequent users. Extroversion was shown to be of greater

importance amongst the young adults, with openness to new experiences being an

important predictor among the mature segment.

In their longitudinal study of the town of Blacksburg, USA Kavanaugh et al (2005)

found extraversion and age (35-64 years), as well as education, were predictors of

participation in and the positive impact of communication technology, regardless of

localism or geographic community. The study uses a social participation path

model to analyse the effects of variables and concludes that the following mediating

variables pertain to social aspects of community life and increase overall

involvement: Collective efficacy (community problem solving), Membership,

Belonging, and Activism (as in being actively involved).

The concept of ‘Social Roles’ in online communities was investigated by Gleave,

Welser, Lento & Smith (2009) who looked specifically at Usenet and Wikipedia and

used egocentric network analysis to identify three key social roles: ‘answer person’,

‘discussion person’ and ‘discussion catalyst’. They argue that key people enacting

roles affect the productivity and longevity of a group, and postulate that a deeper

understanding of social roles online is key to moving towards a ‘PeopleRank’

approach to qualifying authors of content.

3.9 Online social media and volunteer engagement

In terms of citizen engagement Gibson (2010), in his examination of the use of

social media in local government, states that “social media are all about

communities. They connect people together, help them share who they are,

encourage conversation and build trust. They are the most powerful tool available

today for building a sense of belonging and collaboration in a virtual, or local, area.”



Gibson acknowledges the challenges of measuring the impact of social media and

the role that softer measures such as perception might play.

Brodie et al. (2009) conclude that the ability of individuals to bypass existing

organisational structures is “likely to lead to the creation of a greater number of

looser, less formal groups and networks” whilst acknowledging the issues around

digital exclusion.

On his blog Maggi (2009) discusses the importance of finding the ‘influencers’

within a community. He considers the relative merits of ‘reach’ and ‘affinity’. Reach

represents a large number of relatively weak interpersonal ties, whilst affinity

represents a network with stronger interpersonal ties, as presented in Figure 3-12.

Figure 3-12 Social Influence: reach vs affinity Source: Maggi (2009)

Flouch and Harris (2010) carried out a study of 160 local websites in London: “The

citizen-led local online ecosystem is becoming richer and more varied.

Understanding the impacts and implications of the sites within this ecosystem

requires some framework against which each one can be calibrated and

understood.” They propose a typology of citizen-run neighbourhood websites,

including two commercially led types. The typography includes eight different

categories represented in Figure 3-13.



Figure 3-13 Citizen-led Local Online Ecosystem Overview: High level model Source: Flouch and Harris (2010)

Based on a large-scale nation survey in the USA, Gil de Zuniga & Valenzuela

(2010) explore a number of hypotheses relating to online and offline network size,

the strength of ties within the networks, and levels of civic engagement (equated to

voluntary civic activity). They conclude that there is a positive relationship between

online and offline network size and civic engagement, that weak-tie discussion is a

strong predictor of civic behaviours, and online networks provide greater exposure

to weak-ties than offline networks.

3.10 Cumbria and the Eden Valley Three recent relevant studies have been carried out either including or looking

specifically at Cumbria and the Eden Valley.

Roberts (2011) focuses specifically on the Eden Valley in an assessment of

learning from the Big Society Vanguard project. Published in August, just 12

months after the announcement of the Eden Valley as a Big Society Vanguard

area, the report is based on a number of interviews with key actors and looks at a

number of initiatives including Community Broadband. The report briefly refers to

the broadbandcumbria.com website and the aspirations embodied in the ‘Eden



Declaration’ (see Appendix B). The report concludes that the Vanguard project has

enabled significant or exceptional progress for a number of community led

initiatives, however not in the case of broadband which is seen as ‘at an early

stage’.

Broadband Delivery UK (2011) reports on the lessons learnt from the Superfast

Pilots; four rural pilot projects that include Cumbria. The section on community

based approaches looks specifically at Cumbria and acknowledges that ‘the

success of community based projects is dependent on community organisation and

mobilisation’. The difficulties faced by small communities when engaging with

suppliers is noted, and the suggestion is made that clustering/aggregation of

communities may improve leverage.

An analysis of Social Media by Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Police (2011)

aims to gauge the range and level of online civic activity in Cumbria: both individual

actors and websites. The research specifically identifies rural broadband as a

campaign that is ‘extremely effective with respect to creating and engaging online

community,’ although some lack of focus and direction is noted. The report uses a

typography to identify online behaviour as shown in Table 3.5.

Table 3.5 Categories of Content and Online Behaviour Source: Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Police (2011)

Category of Content Intent / Behaviour

Informal social I use social media in order to socialise with my friends and family

– I just want to keep in touch with people.

Informal civic I use social media to connect to my local community and talk

about issues which I think are important to us

Formal civic I use social media to make sure that the views of my community

are considered by decision makers and are part of the final

decision. I want to influence things.

Formal democratic I want to be part of setting the agenda for my community – I want

to change things.

The report presents an analysis of 195 civic websites by type, as shown in Figure 3-

14.



Figure 3-14 Cumbrian websites by Type Source: Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Police (2011)

Based on the classification used, broadbandcumbria.com would fall into the

‘Campaigns’ category; “Social media sites that are driving a specific campaign”.

Looking at the analysis of campaign sites by type in Figure 3-15, it can be seen

that, as a campaign topic, broadband has the largest number of sites.

Figure 3-15 Cumbrian websites by Campaign Source: Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Police (2011)



The report notes that the local MP is active and effective online, as are local

communities, however the research found “very little activity from local Councillors”.

The report also surveyed a small number of active online ‘civic creators’ and found

an even gender balance, highly educated, with an average age of 61. The

respondents were also notably active offline within their communities, but not

particularly networked between themselves. The report raises some concerns

about the future of the broadband campaign websites, a ‘valuable asset’.

3.11 Evaluation and Summary The study of online social media and their effect on volunteer engagement is a

nascent, evolving area, with a growing body of topical, recent, and interesting work

emerging.

Previous work on engagement has typically been undertaken with a focus on

participation, generally representing the interests of the sponsors of the studies

(central/local government, charities, etc), rather than from the perspective of the

individual. Volunteers are also employees and citizens as conceptualised in Figure

3.16. The ‘Pathways Through Participation’ report (Brodie et al 2011) redresses

this to some extent, but it is not primarily focussed on online engagement.

Figure 3-16 A conceptualisation of the individual as an engaged actor in different contexts

State Market Citizen Employee Engagement Engagement Individual

Community Volunteer

Engagement



The large-scale Citizen Survey (CLG 2010) uses a crude measure of volunteering

(one a year) to indicate trends. The Ladder of Participation (Arnstein, 1969) is a

widely respected model. A summary of types of citizen participation as explored in

this literature review is presented in Table 2.5.

The exact definition of social media is still evolving and can best be represented as

it currently exists by the typographies proposed by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010),

Bradley (2011), and Flouch and Harris (2010).

The study of the impact of online social media is an area in flux as the nature of

social media technologies is rapidly evolving. Much of the work that has been done

to date relates to the commercial exploitation, or return on investment, of online

social media, and the engagement of communities and individuals as customers.

Other studies focus on the use of social media to support local government services

and citizen engagement. Digital exclusion and the digital divide are seen as issues

impacting digital engagement.

Table 3.6 Summary of Participation as explored in this literature review Individual

Participation Social Participation


Description

The choices and actions that individuals make as part of their daily life.

The collective activities that individuals may be involved in as part of their everyday lives.

The engagement of individuals with the various structures and institutions of democracy.

Formal / Informal Volunteering

Informal; giving unpaid help as an individual to people who are not relatives.

Formal; through groups and organisations.

Formal; through democratic structures and institutions.

Civic Engagement

Civic participation: wider forms of engagement in democratic processes, such as contacting an elected representative, taking part in a public demonstration or protest, or signing a petition.

Civic consultation: active engagement in consultation about local services or issues such as attending a consultation group or completing a questionnaire about these services.

Civic activism: involvement either in direct decision-making about local services or issues, or in the actual provision of these services by taking on a role such as a local councillor, school governor or magistrate.

Key Relationships

Individual statements of the kind of society they want to live in.

The associations people form between and for themselves.

The relationship between individuals and the state.

Category of Content Created

Informal Social: Keeping in touch with friends and family.

Informal Civic: Talk about issues with the community.

Formal Civic, Formal Democratic: Influence/change things.



There is an acknowledgement that the wide range of metrics available as ‘archival

data’ from internet activities can only tell part of the story. As suggested by Gibson

(2010) softer, more interpretive, data is required to give a fuller picture.

The UK population has a high number of regular internet users and over 30%

upload self-created content to share (European Commission, 2010).

It is interesting to overlay Inglehart’s Cultural Map categories onto the EU’s activity

by country data to create the composite Figure 3-17. The yellow circled countries

(including the UK) are Inglehart’s English Speakers or Protestant Europeans, and

score highly for Secular-Rational Values and Self-Expression on Inglehart’s map.

They also score higher than the EU average for regular internet use and/or

uploaded self-created content to be shared.

Copyright © 2012

Figure 3-17 Ingleheart’s Cultural Mapping Overlaid on the European Commission’s Internet Activity by Country

Participation in social

activities undertaken, such as posting, commenting, sharing etc and a number of

models proposed (Neilsen

not generally include a time

activity has defining features as identified by Brodie et al (2011).

The concept of an online community life

an interesting one proposed by Iriberri & Gondy (2009).

The empowerment of the individual, or psychological empowerment, considered by

Leung (2009) as it relates to the creation of online content, provides one framework

for considering the individual as an act

adoption of a social role, as investigated by Gleave, Wesler, Lento & Smith (2009)

is also potentially relevant to the success of an individual in an online community.

Cumbria and the Eden Valley are rural areas wit

communities and engaged

Broadband Delivery UK (2011) and Cumbria County Council & Cumbria

Constabulary (2011).

Kingston University

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Ingleheart’s Cultural Mapping Overlaid on the European Commission’s Internet Activity by Country Data

Participation in social media has been looked at from the perspective


models proposed (Neilsen 2006), (Bernhoff 2010). Interestingly the

not generally include a time-frame, or frequency, aspect. Participation as a generic

activity has defining features as identified by Brodie et al (2011).

The concept of an online community life-cycle and related indicators for success is

teresting one proposed by Iriberri & Gondy (2009).



for considering the individual as an actor engaged in online social media.



Cumbria and the Eden Valley are rural areas with active offline and online

engaged individual actors as reported by Roberts (2011),



Ingleheart’s Cultural Mapping Overlaid on the European Data

media has been looked at from the perspective of the online


). Interestingly these models do

Participation as a generic

cycle and related indicators for success is



or engaged in online social media. The



h active offline and online

as reported by Roberts (2011),




The thick-trust/thin-trust concepts considered by Halpern (2005) may both apply to

rural communities as they exist in the modern online social space. The question of

reach and affinity explored by Maggi (2009) is a potentially interesting one to

consider in this context, as is the extent that network size and weak-tie discussions

act as predictors of civic behaviours, as explored by Gil de Zungia & Valenzuela

(2010).

The personality predictors identified by Correa, Hinsley & De Zuniga (2010) may

appear more consistently in the population of rural communities than the population

as a whole.

Although, in this relatively new and evolving area, no prescribed, conclusive or

widely accepted models have been identified, this literature review has identified a

range of interesting relevant concepts and frameworks that can be used to guide

and inform the exploration of the perceived efficacy of online social media in the

campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley, Cumbria, specifically the

broadbandcumbria.com website.



4 Aims and Research Questions

4.1 Overview Considering the complex context of the campaign for rural broadband in general,

and in the Eden Valley, Cumbria specifically, several interesting questions arise.

• To what can extent online social media be effective in supporting change,

particularly in an area that has limited internet connectivity?

• Is the potentially strong social cohesiveness of smaller rural communities

contributing to making online social media more effective?

• Is the combination of communities of interest and geographical communities

a potent one?

• Do the existing connections within a rural community render the online

community more or less redundant?

• The issues that are being raised involve complex technical and commercial

concepts; is this a barrier to engagement?

• What are seen as the benefits to be gained from improved broadband for

individuals, communities, and businesses?

• What can be learned from Eden Valley that could be applied to similar

campaigns in other rural communities?

• What does success, in terms of the use of online social media to promote

volunteer engagement, look like?

• What actions, both online and offline, have been taken following exposure to

social media?

The literature review identified a number of broad concepts and frameworks that

give signposts and directions in which to explore the perceived efficacy of online

social media in the campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley, Cumbria;

specifically the broadbandcumbria.com website. These models, and the work of

previous studies, can be adapted and used as a lens through which to examine this

case in some depth.

• Propensity to engagement; demographic, social orientation, and personality

as predictors of behaviour.

• Frequency and types of use of social media and the internet.

• Engagement as Participation; Individual, Social and Political.



• Participation in terms of its identifying features; Voluntary, about action,

collective or connected, and purposeful.

• Social Influence, Reach and affinity; the size of social networks and the

strength of interpersonal ties, both on and off-line.

• The Life Cycle Stages of community websites; engagement over time.

The precise research objective and related research questions that have developed

from this preparatory work are outlined below.

4.2 Research Objective

1. To explore and conceptualise the use of online social media in enhancing

volunteer engagement, specifically as used in the campaign for rural

broadband in the Eden Valley, Cumbria.

4.3 Research Questions

1. How have online social media been implemented in the context of the

broadbandcumbria.com website and to what extent they been used over

time?

2. What are the perceptions of effectiveness of the use of online social media,

specifically broadbandcumbria.com, in terms of volunteer engagement with

the campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley?

The literature suggests that there is no one preferred research approach; a wide

range of approaches have been used in past studies.

Figure 4-1 presents an emerging conceptualisation of the research questions in

terms of some of the theory explored in the literature review: mapping the use of

online social media in terms of levels of volunteer engagement. How might the

perceived effectiveness of the use of social media in terms of engaging volunteers

in the context of the Eden Valley’s fight for rural broadband look when mapped in a

similar way?



High volunteer

engagement

Political

participation

Thick-trust, high

affinity, low reach,

geographic

communities

Medium volunteer

engagement

Social

participation

Low volunteer

engagement

Individual

participation

Thin-trust,

high reach, low

affinity, communities

of interest

90% ‘lurkers’

Low online social

media engagement

9% intermittent

contributors

Medium online social

media engagement

1% heavy

contributors

High online social

media engagement

Figure 4-1 Conceptual mapping of the use of online social media in terms of

levels of volunteer engagement



5 Research Design Methodology

5.1 Overview Having developed the research objective and research questions, this chapter

considers the research philosophy appropriate to the research subject. The

literature does not suggest one preferred research approach; a wide range of

approaches have been used in past studies. Different research philosophies are

considered with a view to identifying the rationale for the adoption of the case study

as the research approach for the project. Data collection methods are detailed for

both primary and secondary, qualitative and quantitative data. Limitations of the

research methodology are also discussed.

5.2 Research Philosophy This project combines two areas of investigation that are very different in nature:

• The environment of the internet and online social media is objective,

impersonal, and highly measurable.

• The engagement of volunteers and communities, their perception of their

own response to their experience of online social media, is based in the

subjective world of human actors.

Having considered both the Positivist tradition and the Interpretivist approach, there

are merits and benefits to both in this context. The analytic, deductive Positivist

style is appropriate to the investigation of aggregated de-personalised data from the

internet, such as that available from Google Analytics. The inductive, intuitive

Interpretivist approach is highly appropriate for the exploration of individuals’

reflections and perceptions of their experiences.

In summary the Pragmatist approach seems the ideal fit for this research project as

it allows for the combination of both the Positivist and Interpretivist philosophies as

conceptualised in Figure 3-1.

Figure 5-1 A conceptualisation of the Pragmatist approach

Positivist Interpretivist Objectivism/ Realism Pragmatism Subjectivism Deductive Inductive Analytic Creative

"It is the theory that decides what can be observed." Albert Einstein



As the use of the Interpretivist approach to the topic is by definition subjective, the

judgements made will reflect to some extent the life-experience and values of the

researcher. As suggested by Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill (2009) a statement of

personal values related to this study is included below.

The researcher believes:

• Access to the internet is, and has been, central and fundamental to their

personal development; the internet enables individuals to flourish.

• The commitment and energy that volunteers can bring to a project is

valuable; voluntary effort can achieve extraordinary results.

• The pace of technological change is rapid and increasing; individuals are

generally uncomfortable with uncertainties related to the evolutionary and

revolutionary effects of technological development.

• It is unlikely that government can be influenced by individuals; UK politics is

disempowering of the individual citizen.

• Awareness of culture is important; there are barriers to communication

between different UK sub-cultures that are not generally recognised and

these impact negatively on progress.

• There are significant issues implicit in the short-term requirement for

shareholder return on investment inherent in the structure of commercial

businesses.

• It is the duty of both citizen and state to base decisions on the long-term, as

well as the short-term, benefits to society.

5.3 Research Approach The inductive, discovery-led approach allows the ‘story’ to be told, explores issues,

problems and opportunities, and the development of a narrative.

The deductive, theory-led approach allows the matching of data to the theoretical

model and to evaluate how well the theory applies to a ‘real-world’ application.

The research approach adopted was primarily discovery-led where insights into

perceptions of volunteer engagement were explored, and primarily theory-led when

related to the analysis of data (primary and archival secondary data).

Copyright © 2012

5.4 Research Strategy

The optimal, practical, research strategy

archival data, as well as a small

depth face-to-face semi

to examine.

The case study approach

contemporary phenomenon within a particular conte

uses varied data collection techniques

triangulation to optimise the outcomes.

The case study approach is consistent with the Pragmatic research philosophy, and

supports the combination of

terms of this project, it can be considered

described by Yin (2003).

5.5 Research Paradigm A rich case study mixed

scale questionnaire, and archival data, is seen as

as represented in Figure 5

Figure 5-2

To explore and conceptualise the use of online social media in

enhancing volunteer engagement, specifically as used in the

campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley, Cumbria.

Research Question 1:

How have online social media been implemented in

the context of the broadbandcumbria.com website

and to what extent they been used over time?

Secondary Data:

•Google Analytics data: longitudinal and archival

•Wordpress Data: longitudinal and archival

•Facebook Fan page data: snapshot

•Twitter account data: snapshot

Kingston University

Page 45 of 175

Research Strategy

The optimal, practical, research strategy for the project is the case study, using

archival data, as well as a small-scale questionnaire, and a small number of

face semi-structured interviews, thus gathering a rich variety of data

approach allows a rich, detailed examination of a

contemporary phenomenon within a particular context (Yin 2003)

uses varied data collection techniques, both qualitative and quantitative,

triangulation to optimise the outcomes.


the combination of discovery-led and theory-led research approaches

, it can be considered a single, holistic case

described by Yin (2003).

Research Paradigm

mixed-method approach, combining data from interview

, and archival data, is seen as optimal for this research project

as represented in Figure 5-2.

2 A conceptualisation of the Research Approach

Research Objective:




How have online social media been implemented in

the context of the broadbandcumbria.com website

and to what extent they been used over time?

Google Analytics data: longitudinal and archival

Wordpress Data: longitudinal and archival

Facebook Fan page data: snapshot

Twitter account data: snapshot

Research Question 2 :

What are the perceptions of effectiveness of

the use of online social media, specifically

broadbandcumbria.com, in terms of volunteer

engagement with the campaign for rural

broadband in the Eden Valley?

Primary data:

•Small-scale questionnaire: cross

•Face-to-face interviews: cross


is the case study, using

a small number of in-

a rich variety of data

allows a rich, detailed examination of a specific

2003). The case study

, both qualitative and quantitative, and


research approaches. In

a single, holistic case using the criteria

approach, combining data from interviews, a small-

optimal for this research project

Research Approach




What are the perceptions of effectiveness of

the use of online social media, specifically

broadbandcumbria.com, in terms of volunteer

engagement with the campaign for rural

broadband in the Eden Valley?

scale questionnaire: cross-sectional

face interviews: cross-sectional



The data analysis is not expected to produce results that are statistically accurate

or that can be generalised to the wider population, but will contribute to the depth of

understanding of the case in question. The different data sources will allow the

study to utilise data and methodological triangulation, provide complementary

viewpoints, and look at both macro and micro aspects of the case, as represented

in Figure 5-3.

Figure 5-3 A conceptualisation of the Data Collection Sources

5.6 Data Collection Methods The following sequence of data collection from a variety of sources was undertaken

with the intention of building up layers of understanding and depth of insight.

Archival Data Archival data that has been collected during the course of day-to-day activities is a

valuable source of data (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill 2009). In terms of this

project access to archival online data was agreed, and is considered a useful

source of secondary data. The archival data allows an element of longitudinal

analysis to be included in the study as it was recorded over time. Data was

collected from four different sources:

• Google Analytics for the Broadband Cumbria website (longitudinal)

• Wordpress activity data from the Broadband Cumbria website (longitudinal)



• Facebook fan page analytics data (snapshot)

• Twitter account data (snapshot)

The data is anonymised and thus the privacy of individuals is protected. Access to

the data was agreed with the webmaster. An initial set of data was examined as

part of the preparation for the project proposal to ensure the approach would be

practicable.

The data was coded as required, and analysed quantitatively where appropriate

using Excel. Insights gained from reviewing the data were used to inform the

development of the questionnaire.

Small-scale Questionnaire A large-scale survey was beyond the resources of this project; however, a small-

scale questionnaire was carried out and provided primary data.

The questionnaire (primary) data is cross-sectional. In the absence of a suitable

existing previously validated questionnaire the author designed a set of eleven

multi-part questions designed to gain insight into perceptions and behaviours, as

well as attitudes and demographic data (see Appendix E). The questionnaire data

was collected using a self-administered online survey tool (Survey Monkey). This

was seen as appropriate as the questionnaire was aimed at online social media

users.

The target population was defined as “the users of the Broadband Cumbria

website”; as at 20 September 2011 there were 452 registered members. This

decision was made on the assumption that if 7% of the members responded to the

questionnaire this approach would generate a sufficient volume of data to analyse

(30+ responses).

There were several possible approaches to alerting the members of the website to

the questionnaire, and the final approach of posting a comment on the website with

a link to the questionnaire was agreed with the webmaster of the website. In

addition a number of individuals were contacted using the messaging facilities on

the website to invite them to participate.



The design of the questionnaire was informed by the literature review, relevant

theory and models, the results of the archival data analysis, and a consideration of

the parallel development of interview questions.

Overall objectives:

• To have as few questions as possible and to utilise Likert-type ratings scales

(from one to five) where appropriate. This was to encourage participation

and completion; for speed and ease of use.

• To have a balance of questions phrased both positively and negatively.

• To include questions relating to previous studies or models included for

comparison, where appropriate for the audience and context.

• To include questions developed specifically to shed light on this case.

• To allow any question to be missed out or not answered.

• To allow respondents the opportunity to add their own comments by

including an open question.

Previous studies had demonstrated predictors of behaviour based on Education,

Income, Gender, Age, and Personality. Education and income were seen as

inappropriate for this audience and were not included. Gender and an indication of

age (young adult/adult) were included.

Personality had previously been gauged by Gil de Zuniga & Valenzuela (2010)

using a Semantic differential scale, eg. 1 (extravert/enthusiastic) to 5

(reserved/quiet). For this study the question was modified to “I am typically

reserved/quiet” 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Questions relating to Social Orientation as predictors of behaviour have again been

used in previous studies, such as Life satisfaction, Organisational trust, Ideological

identity and Organisational membership. Life satisfaction and Organisational trust

questions were included in a modified form to fit in with the adopted ratings scale 1

(strongly disagree) 5 (strongly agree).

Questions relating to media use, specifically frequency, were based on the

European Commission’s digital agenda definitions; 1 Never to 5 Frequently (at least

weekly). Questions relating to social networks of discussion include the size of

online and offline networks, and the strength of ties.



Participation in the past 12 months, in terms of Social participation, Public

participation and Individual participation, was investigated by including two

questions that are indicators for each type of participation, again using the scale 1

Never to 5 Frequently (at least weekly).

Questions were included pertaining to the Indicators of participation identified by

Brodie et al (2011); Collective or connected, Purposeful/worthwhile, About action,

Motivation, and Collective efficacy, as well as on perceptions of Social role in the

online community again using the ratings scale 1 (strongly disagree) 5 (strongly

agree).

Additional questions relating to location, interest, internet accessibility, and level of

engagement with the broadband campaign are specific to this study. Other study

specific questions include the perception of the effect of broadbandcumbria.com on

both the campaign and the individual respondent.

The questionnaire was tested and slightly refined based on feedback before being

posted on the broadbandcumbria.com website. It was perceived that the assurance

of anonymity would encourage responses and also openness. No replies were

traceable back to the respondent.

The results data were downloaded from the internet, coded as required, and

quantitative data analysis was performed to produce descriptive statistics where

appropriate.

Interviews

Interview (primary) data is cross-sectional. The interview data was collected in one-

to-one, face-to-face interviews, using a semi-structured approach, recording the

interviews for later transcription.

Five interviews of up to one hour each were conducted over a weekend visit to

Cumbria, in the homes of the interviewees. One interview was conducted in

London at the workplace of the interviewee.

The design of the interview questions was informed by the literature review,

relevant theory and models, the results of the archival data analysis, and the results



of the questionnaire. The eleven interview questions (Appendix G) were open and

probing as they were intended to explore the individuals’ reflections and

perceptions of engagement. Again it was perceived that the assurance of

anonymity would encourage full responses and openness. A pro-forma was

developed and followed to ensure all interviews were performed to a consistent

format.

Five of the six interview subjects were unknown to the researcher and were invited

by emails or online messages to participate as members of broadbandcumbia.com.

The sixth subject (a couple) provided a Bed and Breakfast service to the researcher

during a previous visit to the region. They are not members of

broadbandcumbria.com.

The interviews were transcribed, examined in depth, and interpreted to identify

themes and patterns, highlight contradictions, and construct a narrative.

5.7 Ethical/Privacy Considerations As the Case Study collected data from a number of sources, a number of ethical

considerations were raised and needed to be addressed with transparency.

• Informed consent and honesty when engaging with the participants of

interviews and questionnaires.

• Privacy, data protection, and confidentiality using data collected online.

• Permission to use and access online data.

• Security of data and access codes.

• Audio recording and transcription consent.

• Anonymity.

5.8 Limitations It is recognised that there are a number of both potential and actual limitations on

the methodological approach. The relative inexperience of the author in performing

original research must be acknowledged. This has been mitigated as far a possible

by referencing other work, following best practice advice, and background reading.

The potential for researcher bias in the design of the questionnaire and interview

questions, as well as the collection of interview data, is recognised. The risk has



been managed by building on previous studies and adapting questions used by

other researchers as far as possible.

The potential for researcher bias in the interpretation of qualitative data has been

noted and a statement of personal values presented to allow the interested reader

to judge where bias may be likely to impact the report. The researcher has

received no financial reward for the work.

Reliability and validity are considerations. Archival data-sets from Google Analytics

are recognised as not 100% accurate as a number of factors can affect the

collection of the data such as: users that do not use Java-script are not counted;

‘location’ is dependent on the ISP used; a ‘unique user’ is more accurately a unique

device; and page views are likely to be underestimated if pages do not fully load.

The reliability of the small-scale questionnaire data has been encouraged by the

careful construction of the questions, testing the questions, and the voluntary nature

both of participation, and of giving answers – no answers were forced. This said,

there is the inevitable risk of misinterpretation of both the questions and the

selected answers, as well as deliberately false or unintentionally misleading replies.

The risk of mis-recording interview answers was mitigated by digitally recording

each interview; however, background noise for example, or indistinct passages,

may affect the reliability of the transcript.

There is some risk that the researcher is not sufficiently familiar with the context,

area, personalities, background, and politics of the situation to be able to make

informed judgements, avoid manipulation, or detect inaccuracies or inconsistencies.

This study is not intended, nor likely to provide, generalisable results. It is

recognised that the interview subjects and questionnaire respondents are drawn

from a small and specific audience that is not representative of the population as a

whole.



5.9 Summary The case study approach has been supported by a variety of data collection

methods with the aim of gathering a rich, varied and comprehensive set of results

for interpretation and analysis.

The results are presented in the next Chapter.



6 Results

This section presents a selective overview of the research results starting with the

high-level archival data, then considers the questionnaire results, and finally looks

in depth at the interview data. The data was approached with an open mind, as

opposed to a rigid framework. This allowed themes to develop as the results were

explored. More detailed results are presented in the Appendices as follows:

Appendix C WordPress Activity Data for the Broadbandcumbria.com

Website

Appendix D Google Analytics Data for the Broadbandcumbria.com Website

Appendix E Small-Scale Online Questionnaire

Appendix F Small-Scale Online Questionnaire Results

Appendix G Semi-Structured Interview Pro-forma and Questions

Appendix H Semi-Structured Interview Pro-forma Transcripts

Before looking at the data, it is useful to recap how online social media have been

implemented in the specific case under investigation. Broadbandcumbria.com is a

community website built using WordPress, “web software you can use to create a

beautiful website or blog”6, with a BuddyPress plug-in; “BuddyPress is built to bring

people together. It works well to enable people with similar interests to connect and

communicate.”7 Together these provide a number of social media facilities

including:

Blogging: This allows blog ‘articles’ to be written and posted, and the online

community to comment and debate in response.

Membership: Individuals can sign up to become a member of the site, set up a

personal profile, and create ‘friend’ links with other members.

Forums: Members can initiate forums to raise and discuss specific issues.

Groups: Members can create and join groups.

Commenting: Comments can be posted publicly on blogs, forums and groups.

Messaging: Members can send each other private messages.

6 http://wordpress.org/

7 http://buddypress.org/about/story/



Hyper-local pages: Specific pages or ‘micro-sites’ that relate to particular

parishes/communities can be created.

Crowd-sourced Content: Has been included, for example help-pages, a glossary,

mapping data, and the ‘Eden Declaration’ (Appendix B).

Associated Twitter and Facebook accounts have also been set up and used.

In terms of ownership and funding, the following comment by Louis Mosley [Roy

Stewart, MP’s assistant] is taken from the website: “Cumbria Broadband Rural &

Community Projects Ltd is the company set up to run the [rural broadband]

conference at Rheged on 18 September. It’s now using the v small surplus that

remained after the event to cover the costs of this website! Rory [Stewart, MP] is a

director.”8 The website was initially installed and set-up by Harry Metcalfe of The

Dexterous Web9 company, and has subsequently been maintained by a variety of

individuals and employees of Rory Stewart, MP. The two main purposes of the

website initially were described as;

• To provide a place for the community to connect, to find each other and

allow local pressure groups to form.

• To provide a campaign medium for Westminster Village, a place to post

information for a Westminster audience, furthering a political campaign.

6.1 Archival Data Google Analytics for the broadbandcumbria.com Website

Looking first at the data taken from Google Analytics covering the period 1st

December 2010 to 20th September 2011 over 25,000 visits have been recorded,

from 107 countries/territories. The United Kingdom accounts for over 23,000 of the

visits (91%). Looking at the distribution in the UK, 664 cities are identified including

many in apparently remote locations. This low-level location data cannot be given

too much weight as it is likely to be based on the location of the ISP rather than the

end-user.

8 http://broadbandcumbria.com/groups/miscellany/

9 http://dxw.com/our-work/



The number of visits per month was highest in December 2010, the first complete

month after the website was launched, with 5,757 (22%) of visits. From April to

August 2011 the number of visits per month remained fairly consistent and

averaged 1,618 visits per month as shown in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6-1 Visits per month Source: Google Analytics

In the period 1st December 2010 to 20th September 2011 there were over 10,000

unique visitors reported. This number is likely to be somewhat overstated as some

individuals will be using more than one device and will be recorded more than once.

The average time on site per visit was 4.21 minutes, and the average number of

pages viewed was 3.47 per visit. In all 89,699 pages have been viewed. The time

on site and pages per visit can be considered high and a sign of positive

engagement with the content.

Investigating the source of visits can give some insight into who is using the

website. Considering the UK visits only, the source data was analysed, allocated to

a type, and summarised in Figure 6-2. While the largest number of visits (42%) are

from search engines, a significant number are direct visits (28%). Direct visits can

indicate the site has been bookmarked by users. Social media, including twitter

(792), facebook (183), and various blogs account for 7%. Local websites, visits

from broadbandcumbria.com e-mail newsletters and linked micro-sites together

account for 17% of the visits indicating a strong local audience. National websites,

such as the national press and telecoms related companies, account for 4% of

visits, which could be seen as indicating an unusual degree of national interest

given the very local nature of the website.



Figure 6-2 Analysis of Sources of Visits Source: Google Analytics Data

Twitter Data

A twitter account ‘@bbcumbria’ reflects the community website on twitter. A

snapshot of the account taken in September 2011 is given in Figure 6-3.

Compared with the number of visits to the website generated from twitter (792), the

number of tweets is very low (35). This implies other more active twitter users have

generated activity that has created the traffic flow to the website. This account is

effectively dormant despite having 247 followers.



Figure 6-3 Twitter Account Page Source: Twitter.com

Facebook Data

A facebook page represents the broadbandcumbria.com website on facebook. A

snapshot of this page is given in Figure 6-4, showing 112 people ‘liking’ the page.

The most recent activity on the ‘wall’ of the page is from March 2011. Facebook

generated 183 visits to the website, indicating that either the 112 ‘fans’ have

generally visited the website from a different source, or they have not engaged with

the website at all.



Figure 6-4 Facebook Account Page Source: Facebook.com

An insight into the pattern of activity over time on the facebook page is given in

Figure 6-5. As with the Google Analytics, an initial flurry of activity following the

launch has reduced and levelled out by April 2011. It is unclear why no activity is

shown initially, but this may be due to a problem with facebook. As with the twitter

account, the activity on the facebook account is low.

Figure 6-5 Facebook Insights Source: Facebook.com



WordPress Activity Data The broadbandcumbria.com community website is based on the popular

WordPress application. The WordPress data presents a record of the activity on

the site. It has been analysed and provides a valuable insight into the actions of the

members of the website over time. Note private message data was not provided or

used.

As at the 20th September 2011 the website had 452 members. Figure 6-6 shows

both the activity on the site and the new members signing up by month. Over 70%

of members signed up in December 2010 and January 2011 (318). Following the

initial peak of activity early in the year, the number of new members per month has

dropped to an average of 10 per month from April to August. Similarly the other

activity (posts, comments, befriending etc) has levelled out to an average of 100 per

month.

Figure 6-6 Activity analysis

Source: WordPress Activity data

Looking at the all the activity of the members of the site, analysed by activity type in

Figure 6-7, the most popular activity at 37% is ‘friendship_created’ (1,351). This

activity allows members to link to other members of the site. On average a member

has 6 friends as each link includes two members.



Figure 6-7 Activity analysis by type

Source: WordPress Activity data

Blog posts (155) account for 4% of the activity, and the creation of new groups and

forum topics (21 and 13) represent just 1.4%. In contrast comments and updates

(blog comments, group updates, forum posts, activity updates and activity

comments) account for 35% of all activity (1,299).

Looking at blog posts and blog comments in more detail, there were 155 blog posts

by 36 members (8%), and 611 comments by 53 members (12%). Overall 66 of the

452 members blogged and/or commented (15%).

The mean number of blog posts per member is 4.5, the median 1.3 and the mode

1. The range is 28, minimum is 1 and the maximum 29. Figure 6-9 is a histogram

showing the blog posts per member.



Figure 6-8 Blog Posts per Member Source: WordPress Activity data

The mean number of blog comments per member is 11.5, the median 2, and the

mode 1. The range is 101, minimum is 1 and the maximum 102. Figure 6-9 is a

histogram showing the blog comments per member.

Figure 6-9 Blog Comments per Member Source: WordPress Activity data

In all 18,850 words were written in blog comments, an average of 355 words per

person and 30 words per comment. Figure 6-10 is a representation of words used



in the blog comments created from the text of the comments using the wordle.com10

website tool. The size of the word indicates its relative frequency in the text.

Figure 6-10 Word-cloud representation of all blog comments Source: wordle.com

6.2 Small-Scale Questionnaire Data There were 31 responses to the questionnaire. To encourage openness no

questions were forced and between 1 and 3 respondents skipped some questions.

The percentages given below are based on the number of responses to a question.

Location: 23 (77%) of respondents were local (Cumbrian), 3 (10%) regional (North-

East England), and 4 (13.3%) national (UK). There were no responses from

outside the UK.

Gender: the breakdown was 5 (17%) female and 25 (83%) male.

Age profile: only one respondent was a ‘young adult’ (18-29), with 28 (96%) being

30+.

Internet use: 28 (100%) use the internet frequently (almost daily). 30 (100%) used

the internet from home, 20 (71%) at work/school/university, and 14 (48%) on a

mobile device.

10

http://www.wordle.net/



Engagement with the campaign for rural broadband: 26 (87%) are members of the

broadbandcumbria.com website, 16 (53%) are Parish Broadband Champions, and

5 (1.6%) are Hub Co-ordinators. Personal/family or Community/Social was the

primary interest of 21 (70%) respondents, while Commercial/Business or

Professional/Job-Related was the primary interest of 9 (30%). Just one respondent

identified Political as a secondary interest. Academic/Educational was not indicated

as an interest (primary or secondary) by any respondent.

In terms of extroversion and life satisfaction: the rating average for “I am typically

quiet/reserved” was 2.86 (with 3.00 representing neither agree/disagree) indicating

a bias towards extroversion. Respondents showed positive ratings averages for life

satisfaction (3.57 and 4.07), and also tend to disagree with “my life is difficult”

(2.54).

In terms of organisational trust, the Local Council and the Political System scored

low for trust (2.79 and 2.62). The Judicial System however was more trusted with a

ratings average of 2.83 for “I distrust the Judicial System”.

Considering participation as Individual, Social and Political, as summarised in Table

6.1, there is a strong level of engagement in all three. Looking at the ratings

averages summed for the different types of participation, Social Participation scores

highest (3.18), between ‘Often’ and ‘Regularly’. Individual at (2.98) and Political at

(2.78) fall between ‘Occasionally’ and ‘Often’.



Table 6.1 Results for Individual, Social and Political Participation

Never Occasionally/Often

(1-11 times)

Regularly/Frequently

(Monthly/weekly)

Individual Participation

12b. Raised money for charity,

donated, or participated in a charity

cause such as a petition

4 17 8

12d. Helped out informally in the

local community

3 11 14

Social Participation

12a. Worked or volunteered for local

groups, organisations or charities

5 4 20

12f. Volunteered with informal

community groups, clubs or

associations

8 14 7


12c. Attended a meeting to discuss

neighbourhood problems,

demonstrated, or taken part in

consultations

4 11 13

12e. Voted, campaigned, or lobbied

a political representative

8 15 6

Offline Networks: Offline discussions about rural broadband scores very highly for

both strong-ties, family, close friends or neighbours (4.24), and weak-ties,

acquaintances, colleagues or strangers (4.04), between ‘Often’ and ‘Regularly’

Reach: The number of people communicated with in the last three months about

local issues or current affairs represents the reach of individuals, both online and

offline. The mean for offline (face-to-face or telephone) is 84, with a median of 25

and a mode of 50. The total reach was 2,425 with a range of 0 to 900. The mean

for online (via the internet) is 777, with a median of 70 and a mode of 100. The

total reach was 22,558 with a range of 0 to 10,000.

It is interesting to note that the total reach online is some 930% that of offline, and

the mean (average) 925% higher. There are five individuals with a very high reach

as shown in Figure 6-11.



Figure 6-11 Reach: Number of people communicated with online Content creation and Social Media Use: 28 (95%) respondents have created online

content over the past 12 months, with 20 (69%) creating content

regularly/frequently; 24 (82%) have used online social media in the past 12 months,

with 17 (58%) using it regularly/frequently.

Perception is the theme of the final set of questions, and particularly as they relate

to the broadbandcumbria.com website.

Common purpose: Of the 29 responders 12 (41%) agree/strongly agree that they

are ‘not confident my community is behind this initiative; however, the ratings

average (2.97) implies an overall tendency to disagree with the statement implying

some feeling of common purpose.

A greater connection with the community has been felt by 8 (27%) of responders,

however the ratings average (2.59) implies an overall tendency to disagree with the

statement.



Only 9 (31%) of respondents agree/strongly agree that the website reflects the

commercial/political interests of a few individuals, however the ratings average (3.1)

implies overall no strong feeling either way.

Purposeful/worthwhile: Of the 29 responders, 9 (31%) agree/strongly agree that

“the website reflects the needs and ambitions of my local community”, however the

ratings average (2.89) implies a slight tendency to disagree with the statement, with

9 (31%) neither agreeing/disagreeing.

About Action: In all 10 (34%) of respondents agree/strongly agree that they have

met people offline that they first ‘met’ online.

Only 2 (7%) respondents agree that using the website has increased their

confidence in using social media, with a ratings average (2.1) showing a tendency

to disagree overall.

Impressively 19 (66%) agree/strongly agree that they have participated in events, or

taken action, as a direct or indirect result of using the website. The ratings average

(3.48) indicates agreement overall.

Motivation: Although some 10 (24%) respondents are affected personally by the

lack of broadband in the Eden Valley, in all 23 (79%) do not agree that their

communities have adequate broadband. The low ratings average (1.72) shows that

this is the most strongly disagreed with statement in the survey.

Effectiveness: Only 8 (28%) responders agree/strongly agree that online friends

are all people they already knew, with 14 (48%) disagreeing/strongly, implying that

friendships have been formed via the website.

In all 16 (55%) of responders agree/strongly agree that the website has had a

positive impact on the campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley. The

ratings average (3.48) indicates agreement overall.

The final open question generated 12 responses. These showed a variety of

attitudes and opinion however the overall impression is one of engagement and an

interest in the outcomes of the research.



Finally, it is interesting to look at a sub-set of the responses, including just the Local

and Regional, giving 26 responders. Overall the ratings averages do not change

significantly. Trust in the Local Council scores slightly lower than for the survey as

a whole (2.71 compared to 2.79). Unsurprisingly, the ratings average for ‘the lack

of effective broadband in the Eden Valley affects me’ is slightly higher (3.00

compared to 2.90).

6.3 Interview Data

An overview of the six semi-structured interviews is given in Table 6-2. A range of

interview subjects were included in terms of location, gender, and level of

engagement with the campaign for rural broadband.

Table 6.2 Interview Subjects Summary

Interview No

Gender

Location

Website

Member?

Parish

Broadband

Champion?

Hub Co-

ordinator?

1 Male National Yes No No

2 Male Local Yes Yes No

3 Male Local Yes No No

4 Male Local Yes Yes Yes

5 Married

couple

Local No No No

6 Female Regional Yes No No

The analysis process

The interview transcripts were proof read and checked against the original

recordings. Each interview was then printed and colour coded for identification.

Each interview was read line-by-line and any comments expressing strong feelings

or emotions were highlighted. The interview pages were then cut up and re-

assembled grouped by question. The different responses to each question were

compared and similarities/contradictions identified. An example of this process is

given in Figure 6-12.



Figure 6-12 A example of the transcript analysis process

Finally, the interviewee transcripts were analysed using the wordle.com11 online

utility. The text of each interview (excluding the words Interviewer/Interviewee) was

copied into the utility in turn. The text is automatically analysed, ignoring very

common words (the, a, an, etc) and a word-cloud representation created where the

size of each word indicates its frequency in the text, as shown in Figure 6-13. The

utility can also create a word count table if required. This is intended to give an

accessible visual overview and comparison of each of the interviews.

11

http://www.wordle.net/



Figure 6-13 Word-cloud frequency representations of the interview transcripts



Selected Extracts

As a result of this process of reflection and examination, the researcher has

selected quotations that illustrate a range of attitudes and perceptions, summarised

by the questions asked, in Table 6.3. The order of quotations presented reflects the

interview number order. Multiple quotes from one subject are separated by ‘/’.

Note: not every question was answered by every subject.

Table 6.3 Selected responses to interview questions

The Question Selected Response Extracts

1. How would you

describe your

interest in the Eden

Valley?

..really through Rory [Stewart, MP] himself that I got interested in the project and then obviously became interested in the Valley Project specifically. Quite deep. Family related and locally embedded I suppose I live here. I am active, very active in the community. I love the Eden Valley. My interest is growing because I find it quite unique place to live. We live here, obviously. Love it as a place, well I do anyway. It’s got a lot to offer but it’s got distinct downsides as well to it. ..as I have said to you, a lot of the problems are political, and Eden is the political problem.

2. What do you see

as the strengths

and weaknesses of

rural communities?

Strengths: ..they probably have a higher level of communication between one another and despite you know their distance and so on. ..they tend to be quite self reliant and very heavily networked ..there is very good communication infrastructure in place. Social Network.. Within villages and within family groups. Clans from village to village. I think the clan system is an interesting way to look at it. ..it’s an area in which you feel safe, it’s the people that are very dependable. It’s a like a huge family in a way, living in a village in a rural area like this as opposed to an urban development. I think the rural community is quite cohesive... like any family, you get internal wrangling and I think that’s quite a good description of it in a way we are a bit of a family.. Weaknesses: I suppose one could say that if you have a close knit community, or you aspire to be that, obviously remoteness, distance, low population density could potentially inhibit that. Now one of the weaknesses is that everyone is quite busy. Lots of people are very busy. Isolation, lack of amenities, lack of transport, lack of shopping facilities, basically it.



The major weakness is for young people in my opinion... And I do feel quite strongly about the way we are moving into isolation within the rural areas. We’ve got about third of the village now which is second home owners. And with a very few exceptions we don’t see them really .. giving the village anything. ..information tends to spread very slowly through the village by word of mouth. / I mean it happened very recently, that our next door neighbour died. Everybody assumed we knew..

3. What do you

think the main

advantages of

access to the

internet are for you

personally?

I think largely it is communications. I would say that it puts me in good touch with people that I really would not be in touch with otherwise. Obviously it’s a good networking tool as well. I mean, you know, we are here today because of the internet, for example. Definitely in the commu.. mass communicating and in communicating with remote...people who are remote. It’s central. Beyond that, if my grandchildren come they’ve got access to educational things on the internet. To me that’s of supreme importance. Although I’m of retirement age, internet for young people is an absolute must. And particularly in villages like ours. Main advantage is.. well that’s a hard one, because there are just so many that I found anyway. I use it for literally everything.. We use it quite a lot for research, or whatever it might be... we make a great deal of use of the computer. It’s not the broadband, it’s not essential in sense that the speed of it is less important for us. I just think it is tremendously empowering. I mean that’s it in a nutshell

4. How would you

describe your use

of online social

media?

I would say probably fairly limited actually. I don’t use it unless I have a very good reason. ... I mean I am on Facebook.. I prefer something like LinkedIn, because it is very straightforward, it’s a professional engagement experience. / I don’t feel particularly inclined to Tweet, because that sort of level of communication isn’t something I particularly... particularly go for. / I do blog... It is a big commitment and I am not great at doing it, but I find that writing a few paragraphs is much more my thing. I tend to use blogs quite a lot, because with the Cumbria Neighbourhood watch there’s information coming in and that goes up. Very regularly. I tend to use e-mail massively. I don’t use a lot of online social media. I use Twitter to follow, I don’t make Tweets.. but I do follow things that I’m interested in. As I said I’m a Parish Councillor and I follow Eden District Council on Twitter and I get a lot of information via.. Immediate information that I can follow up. ... I follow family on Twitter. I’m not on Facebook, I don’t particularly like Facebook. I’m a sort of hot and cold man... . I don’t use it so much now, but I use it for.. I’m trying to develop it for the U3A primarily.. it’s not going brilliantly, It’s hard work. / I like social media. I think it’s horses for courses. I think you’ve got to pick and choose what suits yourself. Not all social media suits everybody. No, we’re not on Facebook, we don’t Tweet. / Don’t write blogs.. Don’t see any need for that.. / you know forwarding funny e-mails to people, but that’s about it. Limited. ..wouldn’t dream of telling everybody what I’d been doing cause I don’t



necessarily want everyone to know. / 38 degrees and the Robin Hood Tax.. those things I do actively.. and repetitively participating.. . and I’m also reasonably voluble in Hope not Hate I think.. but only in fact online.. it’s interesting really when you think of it that way. I do partake in all of those..

5. How do you

imagine improved

broadband access

might change the

future for rural

communities?

I think it would be revolutionary. I think it will be amazing. It’ll save tons of CO2, I think the travel time will be cut remarkably. I can’t really express how important I think it is. It could be massive. Oh, it makes everything instantly accessible. Well one important feature that is not generally spoken about is .. it’s going to increase house values. If properties in a rural area have not got a good access then people are not going to move into.. then house prices will fall. I think the main point will be – it means we won’t slip behind the rest of the country. I think that is the simplest way of putting it. If we don’t have it we’ll become even more isolated. / The young people need it I think today. If you have not got it today as a young person, you have got.. it’s like having.. it’s like having electricity and light – I think it’s vital. I mean clearly rural area becomes more attractive to people who run a business if they got good broadband.. that must be an issue. / ..we know there’s lots of people out there who probably have similar values, and similar thoughts, and similar interests but because of the spread of people an efficient broadband system possibly would give them.. would create that opportunity for forums.. So what we would like to do is as CW says, enable the elderly and vulnerable to stay at home and watch their favourite television programme or film over the internet for as long as they possibly can. So, I think it can be a support structure.

6. How did you first

hear about the

broadbandcumbria.

com website?

So Louis (Molsey) [MP’s assistant] did get in touch and said hey you know we are launching this website you know, tomorrow. It was very soon and maybe you would like to start a group? It was via Louis Mosley I think, I think it was Louis Mosley who told me about it. Can’t remember! / I think it was from an e-mail. Rory Stewart (MP) was instrumental in setting it up.. I think at the.. I think one of his assistants at that particular meeting circulated an e-mail to all the people who attended.. It’s a good question cause I can’t answer it.. It just.. I just knew it was there.. Louis Mosley mainly I think informed me but I can’t remember Yes I knew it was out there. And.. But you know, that’s about as far as it’s gone, I haven’t looked at it. We knew it was there the first day it was put online / ..we must have registered somewhere to get an email to tell us.

7. What do you

imagine the aims,

or motivations, of

the people

regularly using the

website have been

over the past year?

..I think there seems to be an agenda for the website where it does inform the community on these sort of situations and circumstances. So it’s a great resource I think if you want to know what’s happening, where/how. I think a full panoply, I think a full range. / So there is a lot of passionate evangelism, technological evangelism going on. Because they also know.. it’s almost like an enlightenment, they know what is potentially possible. The people who are pursuing this via BroadbandCumbria I assume they are the same as me. They push because they don’t want to be left behind. Primarily to get better broadband. I have to say, there is a group I could .. you



can count them on one hand, maybe two, who do it.. simply to unload themselves, to unburden themselves or to make themselves even grander. I think... a lot of people have been.. initially enthused but then haven’t known what to do next. I think.. quite a lot of people are kind of expecting the world to be done to them, rather than to do the world. And.. its... you know, the actual site came online at about the same time as BT Infinity were promoting themselves, and there was quite a lot of confusion between a lot of people.

8. What do you feel

you have learned

about rural

broadband and the

related issues from

other members of

the website?

I think it’s probably mostly .. yeah, it’s combination of political and technical factors to do with implementing broadband in locality like Eden Valley. A lot. One of the things was the sense that the how wide spread the issue is and how relatively fortunate I am too. Not a lot. / In our village there was two or three of us kept each other informed as they’ve heard about things. And the general feeling has been that BroadbandCumbria and all the committees and groups that have been set are not achieving anything and we’re better do it on our own. Huge amount! You know, whilst I criticised those ..just criticised those ..the soapbox, they’ve been hugely informative in their own way. / So it’s been good from the past and it’s good to say these guys know what’s coming in the future, which wasn’t obvious to me at first. So I’ve got a lot from the past, and getting a lot out of it in the future. I learned that some people are quite aggressive online in a way that they are not at all in person. I learned that a lot of people know an awful lot more about things that I do.

9. In what ways do

you feel you have

contributed to other

members of the

website?

I started a group and I just called it Benefits of Broadband. I guess it would more relate to the broader policy issues to do with broadband. I mean I am obviously I am not directly involved with broadband professionally. You know, I just use the internet. I am not sure to what extent they actually learned anything from me. At one stage I got very excited about the mathematics of possibilities. / I couldn’t convince people, I didn’t.. I lack the authority to convince people.. No.. no.. I was on a learning curve. / Ive got nothing to offer. I was there to learn. I’ve got nothing to give. I’ve been in the background on the BroadbandCumbria forum by being the guy who pulls things together for meetings and so on. Very little / I think I did make a very positive contribution in the first instance because an awful lot of people found it a lot too complicated to even sign themselves up / They [help pages] are not up-to-date now, but at the time.. it was apparently useful

10. Do you feel that

using the online

social media has

had an impact on

your impact on

your involvement

with the rural

It’s remained fairly regular. / ..I was hoping this would lead to the on the ground kind of involvement .. / .. the national group outside of the area to come in and get involved and you know I think that would be really great thing that the website could facilitate..so hopefully that would happen at some point. Yes. It has, unequivocally. / The things like attending meetings! I wouldn’t even know the meetings were on if it hadn’t been for Broadband Cumbria. And it was Broadband Cumbria that seeing other people saying ‘I am trying to get to this meeting’ that made me think, ok well I will try as well but it actually is not very convenient.. No.



broadband

campaign?

Not in terms of the Broadband Cumbria Forum, no. Because as I said earlier, I am in the background, I just use it for my information because I can’t contribute to it. At first I couldn’t but I could.. I am going.. I am thinking of going back to it, because I got so much experience now. / . But that had been a fantastic experience and I could pass that on nicely to others and I am thinking now.. well we are thinking all of us, we’re all saying well we got all this information we probably are the best people in the country.. in the Cumbria anyway. Probably not personally, because I've been doing some mapping, of which I knew nothing. / I’d say the forums have been sparking points that caused me to go off and look at other things.

11. In your view

has the Broadband

Cumbria

Community

website enhanced

or impeded the

campaign for rural

broadband?

I can’t really say. I think it’s enhanced it. But yes, on the whole it enhanced it quite a lot. It could only have enhanced it because there must have been people who have gained benefited from it and who have actually got ideas from it to pursue themselves. I can’t see it’s impeded anything. / From my point of view it might have enhanced it in as much as that I didn’t think it was worthwhile, so it encouraged me to go off on another tack. It’s enhanced, without a question.. We as I said, I got a lot from it at the beginning.. I don’t use it at all at the moment, but I’m thinking now I should start to feed back into it.. but I’m in a .. once I get into a position of being of value shall we say.. Difficult to say really, if I haven’t used it. I mean, I would have thought it principle it should be as long as people know it’s out there and are using it. I think it was an essential early part of the system that has been created... It is a great deal less active than in the first stages, but I think that is true for any website.. interactive website, / so it’s perhaps less of an enthusing process for the marginally indifferent who could be tipped into activity then in was twelve months ago. / There is lots happening but it’s elsewhere.. and within the communities not just the pilot communities either.. you know, there are other groups working actively towards doing things..

12. With hindsight,

do you think online

social media could

have been used

more effectively?

I think you know it would have been nice to sort of acknowledge the national relevance more. Though, you know, who knows I don’t know what the perspective would be from local community on that, you know. They obviously want to do it themselves. And you know .. it’s of great interest. / I don’t know you know how many people we have potentially lost from having the format we’ve had .. I don’t know.. I mean the website has been great.. you know at times it had some technical issues / but yeah, I think a slightly slicker website.. I think id’ go with the way it was done, but I’d also.. I think.. I’d also try and.. well one of the reasons why vast numbers of my people haven’t got.. haven’t joined Broadband Cumbria I think, is because I didn’t plug it as much as I could. / the reasons for my reticence, and there are several reasons for it.. one was that initially I wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t just a superfluous addition to what was already there and was doubling up and thus diluting attentions... / I should have said to people please, please, please, pretty please join Broadband Cumbria.. We are going to use this is our main focus point to take stuff for our Microsite off. I think e-petitions are good. Because it gives.. it expresses a percentage view of certain items. / But if it’s just broadband discussion for the sake of broadband discussion, it’s not going to achieve anything. If I could go back, I just make it simpler. I think it trying to do too many things at



once. I mean, I am not criticising it at all because I wouldn’t know how to make it better right now, quite honestly. All I could say is that it’s done the job and that’s been very good. / , the Cumbria Broadband forum – it’s been good. I wouldn’t knock it. But a little complicated,.. I started to lose my way in it. I found I couldn’t find my last blogs. I still can’t, I looked this morning. I think, probably, as I said, it could have been simpler, and then it would have been.. it wouldn’t have intimidated some people. Because I think that is the right word, they were intimidated by it, you know.. it was a sense of ‘Well, I just don’t understand it, this is a lot too complicated for me.. I can’t find my way about it’

13. Is there

anything else that

you would like to

add to what you

have said already?

Probably not. The reason why we only have 345 people on Broadband Cumbria is because I think there is territoriality and that territoriality keeps people within, talking about their things in their places by their normal methods.. We are promoting broadband through our website. / Heart of Eden [Development Trust] website. Well, for one would I start the journey again? Yes, it was been good fun. Looking back – would we do it any differently? Yes, there is lots of ways we should have been doing it but you learn from hindsight. / I haven’t thought it through.. cause I would like to improve it cause it was hard work.. very frustrating. And I don’t think it applies to the broadband.. It applies to BD UK’s way and County Council’s way of dealing with us... Absolutely chaotic way of dealing with us. Purely reliability.. that in the end is what all those people are interested in. Like having a car that stops every so often, because it stops every so often, because there is no petrol in it, it drives you mad! I think I’ve probably gabbled on enough!

In addition to responses to the formal pre-prepared questions, a number of pieces

of additional unexpected information, and expressions of strongly held feelings or

emotions, emerged. These are given in Table 6.4 in no particular order.

Table 6.4 Selection of unexpected and strongly felt interview extracts

Emotion Quotation

Grandeur Stunned Not scared

And I think that as a motivation that should be listed as well, because there is a sense of grandeur about what we are doing that otherwise we would not have. If we were just looking at sorting out our own problems it would feel not just.. not selfish.. but it would be limited.. whereas we know that if we get things right here.. people would benefit in Wales, they’ll benefit in Yorkshire. Before, when I came here I was stunned! My internet was faster than in Tokyo! It was incredible! I couldn’t believe it! I’m not scared of it anymore, which is something you know.. I used , I thought I’d blow up the computer



The best thing Impressed Ignored The Power of Communication BT Upped my speed My heart tuned to stone Indebtedness Secrecy Fears Marvellous

This has been without question or a doubt the best thing for me because I retired in March and it’s as though I haven’t stopped work, actually this has just carried on. Probably on some weeks I might do twenty-thirty hours on this stuff. And I enjoy it. There’s been a few ups and downs obviously and .. that’s life.. but yes, that’s been worth it. I have been out in the world I’ve been away, and I’ve come back to it and I am impressed at the degree of the professionalism that is applied in the amateur volunteerism. we have been ignored in terms of.. in so far as Eden have been preferred and they have.. I mean, they have certainly been politically preferred by Rory [Stewart, MP].. they have not been preferred I don’t think by the County Council.. and they have not been preferred by Mike Kiely [BDUK], I found that really great in that now-one is trying to do their best for the village in isolation.. we all grouped and realised that power is in the formation of communication. Communication between each other and then working together entirely.

it was worse here BT have been around because, especially at our house, they’ve definitely upped my speed by a factor of 2, absolutely no doubt about it. Once they got to know I was Broadband Champion.. our broadband.. and I found that common of all Broadband Champions they’ve said, it goes up. They’ve been fiddling around to get things better. And that’s great. Yep, I actually doubled the speed overnight.

there were certain aspects of this campaign that have been contentious, and there have been times when my heart had sort of turned to stone.. turned to ice you know, occasionally. If you go up to somebody and say ‘My broadband is rubbish, I need your help’. You are in their.. they will be in your debt. They’d owe you something. They don’t want to owe me anything. ‘Say nothing’ has been a watch word for a lot of the meetings. For a lot of the meetings.. And what the fears I had about that was that it could take over the concept of pursuing broadband and take it away from communities. Because it became a wider community in itself it took away the energy from the community it was going to directly benefit. I also use it [social media] for broadbandcumbria quite a bit in the beginning, a year ago because I know nothing, I knew no-one. And I wanted to find out as much as I could and it was marvellous.



Finally, less tangible but still important, are the impressions gained by the

researcher during the process of interviewing people face-to-face, often in their own

homes in remote villages; altruism, thoughtful intelligence, a sense of purpose,

generosity with time and energy, retired, caring for relatives with ill health, and

interestingly, a common theme of not feeling totally integrated into, or perhaps

accepted by, the Cumbrian community, not being ‘Cumbrian’, as summarised

below.

Overall the interview process was extremely valuable in giving an insight into the

perceptions of the people who have used, and have not used, the

broadbandcumbria.com website.

6.4 Summary The range and variety of the data collected allows both a comprehensive and an in-

depth insight into how online social media, as embodied by the community website

broandbandumbria.com, has been used over time and how its impact has been

perceived.

The results presented here provide a rich resource, the interpretation of which, in

relation to the broader themes developed from the Literature Review, is discussed

in the following Chapter.

“Have you lived here a long time?” “No, no, lived here for 10 years. We came through holidays, fell in love with the place, and decided to retire here.” “I’m primarily a newcomer after only six years. / The number of people I know who are not Cumbrians outweighs the Cumbrians by about 2:3. And that’s because there are so many retired people and I am retired.” “I think they will accept you to a certain extent but you can live here for sort of ten years and you don’t feel you’ve moved on any further.” “Because I was brought up in Carlisle, which make me .and CW comes from Devon originally, but I mean he’s been up here forty odd years.. and some of the parish, particularly the parochial sector of the Parish Council, definitely see us as the usurpers... interlopers, who you know.. who should know our place better..”



7 Discussion In this section the themes and questions being explored are considered holistically

in terms of all the data collected, giving a fully rounded, multi-layered interpretation

and assessment of the results. The two research questions are used to frame the

section, with the broad directions of investigation drawn from the literature review

and questions arising from the context analysis section giving additional structure.

Considering first of all how online social media have been implemented in the

context of the broadbandcumbria.com website, it is clear broadbandcumbria.com as

a community website does provide a number of tools that can be classified as

‘online social media’.

In terms of the categories defined by Kaplan and Haelein (2010) the website

provides tools for both low and medium ‘social presence/media richness’ and ‘self

presentation/self-disclosure’ in the blog, social networking, collaborative projects,

and the content community. The levels of activity shown by the WordPress data

provide evidence that these tools are being used, for example the 155 blog posts

and 611 blog comments.

In the terms defined by Preece (2008) the website is an online community, as it

comprises people (452 members), shared purpose (the campaign for rural

broadband), policies or norms, and a computer system.

There is evidence of ‘groundswell’ as presented by Li and Bernhoff (2008), where

people use technologies to learn from each other. This is particularly clear from the

interview data where three of the six subjects felt they had learned a lot from other

members despite some reservations.

As a provider of Hyper-local media, as described by Kurpius, Metzgar and Rowley

(2010), the micro-sites hosted on the broadbandcumbria.com website would appear

to be an enabler; however the interview data identifies some tension between the

broadband community site and existing Hyper-local sites promoting broadband,

with duplication of information being a problem, for example the North Fells

Broadband website and the Heart of Eden Development Trust website.



The crowd-sourcing concept as explored by Brabham (2008) is evidenced on the

website, particularly in the creation of the glossary, help-pages, and the mapping

data.

The associated broadbandcumbria.com twitter and facebook accounts can also be

classified as ‘online social media’.

Considering the question of to what extent the online social media as discussed

above have been used over time, usefully the environment of the internet and

online social media is highly measurable.

The broadbandcumbria.com website itself had over 10,000 unique visitors from 1st

Dec 2010 to 20th September 2011. This could be considered high for a community

website with 452 members. Applying Neilsen’s Rule of Participation Inequality

(2006) with 10,000 visitors one might expect 900 intermittent contributors, as

opposed to 450. This could be an indication that the number of ‘lurkers’, or inactive

visitors, is higher than might be expected. Alternatively this could reflect the

national interest in this very local campaign, perhaps due to the Eden Valley being

both a Big Society Vanguard and a BDUK Pilot area, for example 928 visits came

from National websites (eg newspapers). This may also reflect the fact that website

was perceived by some of the interview subjects as being over complex “they were

intimidated by it, you know.. it was a sense of ‘Well, I just don’t understand it, this is

a lot too complicated for me.. I can’t find my way”. No concrete conclusions can be

drawn.

Reflecting on the longitudinal profile of visits to the website, the initial high of 5,757

in December 2010 dropped to an average of 1,618 by April 2011. This could be

associated with a drop in the promotion of, or the ‘newsworthiness’ of the website,

as press and political attention moved from broadband to other issues.

There is a similar pattern of activity in the WordPress activity data, with 70% of the

members of the website (318) signing up in December 2010 and January 2011, and

the pattern of other activity also peaking in these month. This drop in activity is

anecdotally reflected in the interview data where it was perceived that “It is a great

deal less active than in the first stages, but I think that is true for any website..

interactive website”.



The interview data implies that the reason for the drop is seen to be that the ‘action’

is now taking place off-line “There is lots happening but it’s elsewhere.. and within

the communities not just the pilot communities either..”. There is also an implication

from the interview data that some of the offline discussions were exploratory,

confidential, or secret, and this may have inhibited the sharing of content online;

“‘Say nothing’ has been a watch word for a lot of the meetings. For a lot of the

meetings..”, “at the time we were being a little paranoid and didn’t want Louis

(Mosley) to know everything we were doing.”

The longitudinal and interview data can also be thought about in terms of the online

community Life Cycle framework proposed by Iriberri and Gondy (2009), where the

online community is seen as evolving through stages, from Inception to Creation,

Growth, Maturity and Death. The broadbandcumbria.com online community has

progressed from inception, creation, and, as implied by the website traffic and

WordPress activity data, has had a growth phase. The question now is if the

website can continue to maturity and avoid a premature death. There is some

indication from the interview data that members who have learned from their offline

activity may now feel better placed to share their new expertise online; “I just use it

for my information because I can’t contribute to it. At first I couldn’t but I could.. I

am going.. I am thinking of going back to it, because I’ve got so much experience

now..”.

The Cumbria County Council and Cumbria Police (2011) social media study

concluded that “The work that has been done to campaign for Rural Broadband in

the area has been extremely effective with respect to creating an engaged online

community, however this is now slightly without focus and perhaps lacks direction.”

It is possible that a new purpose and direction will be found once the community are

in a position to share successes or failures with the wider rural community in the

UK; “But once you feel that you’ve got something, then you could start saying hey

we have achieved something, how did we do this? And we are actually keeping an

eye on it.. we keeping a log of how we did it.”, “If we were just looking at sorting out

our own problems it would feel not just.. not selfish.. but it would be limited..

whereas we know that if we get things right here.. people would benefit in Wales,

they’ll benefit in Yorkshire.”



Moving on to examine the behaviour of the members of the website in more detail,

it is interesting to consider their frequency of use of the internet, and the types of

social media they tend to use.

The members of the website, being part of the UK population, are, according to the

overlay of Ingleheart’s Cultural Map onto the European Commission’s internet

activity by country data in Figure 3-17, regular users of the internet (at least once a

week), and more likely to upload self-created content than most of the other EU

countries. It is interesting to consider the possibility that being part of a society that

score highly for self-expression and secular-rational values is a predictor of this

behaviour, as the overlay seems to suggest.

According to the questionnaire results, all of the respondents use the internet

frequently (daily), from home. This might be seen as surprising given that the

campaign website is to fight for rural broadband.

Examining the use of online social media by the members of the website (drawing

from the WordPress activity data) of the 452 members, 36 posted blog articles,

while 53 members commented on the blogs. Applying Neilsen’s Rule of

Participation Inequality (2006), with a base membership of 452 one might expect 5

members to blog (heavy contributors), 41 to post comments (intermittent

contributors), and 407 to ‘lurk’ (or be inactive). In terms of blogging and blog

commenting then it could be argued that the members were unusually engaged.

Looking at the figures another way, 70% of all blog posts were created by 7

members (1.5%), and 66 (15%) either blogged or commented, which are higher

numbers than Neilsen’s 1% and 10% (1% plus 9%) respectively.

Creating friend links was the most frequent activity on the website (37%), and one

that is purely functional, requiring no content creation. The second most frequent

activity by contrast was commenting or updating in various forms (forum posts,

activity updates, group updates etc.), with 35% of the activity. All these actions do

require the creation of content.

The questionnaire results show that 95% of respondents have created online

content within the last 12 months, and 58% use online social media

regularly/frequently.



The interviewees tended not to see themselves as active users of social media

initially, however on reflection they were all, bar one, using it in some form “I’m also

reasonably voluble in Hope not Hate I think.. but only in fact online.. it’s interesting

really when you think of it that way. I do partake in all of those..”.

To summarise it would appear, as evidenced by a number of data sources, that the

members of the website use the internet and social media frequently. The

WordPress data indicates that as a community they are more active in creating

content that Nielsen’s model would suggest.

It is clear from the results that the facebook and twitter accounts associated with

broadbandcumbria.com have had very low levels of use. The reasons for this are

unclear, but presumably they were deemed to be of lesser importance than the

website itself. This could imply that they were created principally to promote the

website at launch.

Considering now the perceptions of effectiveness of the use of online social media,

specifically broadbandcumbria.com, in terms of volunteer engagement with the

campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley, there are a number of factors to

review.

The engagement of volunteers and communities, their perception of their own

response to their experience of online social media, is based in the subjective world

of human actors. The principle data sources that inform this area of the analysis

are the questionnaire results and the interview data.

The first aspect to explore is the propensity of the members of the website to

engagement with demographics, social orientation, and personality as predictors of

behaviour.

Age has been found to be a predictor of online engagement with user-generated

online media (Correa, Hinsley & Gil de Zuniga, 2010, Kavanaugh et al, 2005), with

older adults being more likely to engage. Only one of the respondents to the

questionnaire was in the ‘young-adult’ (18-25) age bracket, and all but one of the

interviewees were at, or close to, retirement age.



Social Orientation has also been identified as a positive predictor of civic

engagement (Gil de Zuniga & Valenzula 2010), and Life Satisfaction was explored

using three questions; ‘I am satisfied with life’, ‘In most ways my life is ideal’, and

‘Things in my life are difficult’. The questionnaire respondents scored positively for

Life Satisfaction.

Extrovert personality traits are a positive predictor of online engagement for both

men and women (Gil de Zuniga & Valenzula 2010). Extroversion was explored

using the question ‘I am typically quiet/reserved’; the respondents showed a bias

towards extroversion.

Overall the members of the website, as represented by the questionnaire

respondents, are typically of a demographic, social orientation, and personality type

that are positive predictors for engagement with user-generated online media.

Looking next at engagement as participation, and specifically Individual, Social and

Political participation (offline), as defined by Brodie et al (2009), the questionnaire

results show a strong level of engagement in all three, with Social participation

scoring the highest.

Combining the high level of social and political participation results with the

Neilsen’s Rule of Participation Inequality figures calculated above, allows a

representation for broadbandcumbia.com to be included on the conceptualised

mapping originally presented in Chapter 4, creating the new mapping given in

Figure 7-1.



High volunteer

engagement

Political

participation

Broadbandcumbria

High volunteer

partipation, 85%

lurkers, 13.5%

intermittent and

1.5% heavy

contributors

Thick-trust, high

affinity, low reach,

geographic

communities

Medium volunteer

engagement

Social

participation

Low volunteer

engagement

Individual

participation

Thin-trust,

high reach, low

affinity, communities

of interest

90% ‘lurkers’

Low online social

media engagement

9% intermittent

contributors

Medium online social

media engagement

1% heavy

contributors

High online social

media engagement

Figure 7-1 Conceptual mapping of the use of online social media in terms of

levels of volunteer engagement, including the broadbandcumbria.com website

One can also consider participation in terms of its identifying features as defined by

Brodie et al (2011): voluntary, about action, collective or connected, and purposeful.

These concepts (with the exception of voluntary, which is assumed in this case)

were explored in the questionnaire in relation to the broadbandcumbria.com

website.

Some of the responses here were not particularly strong. The results imply some

feeling of collective or common purpose, although 41% of respondents

agreed/strongly agreed with the statement ‘I am not confident my community is

behind this initiative’. There was strong consensus that the communities of the



respondents do not have adequate broadband, which one might have expected to

unite communities behind the initiative. A greater connection with the community

was only felt by 27% of the respondents. Some 31% agreed/strongly agreed that

the website ‘reflects the needs and ambitions of my local community’ however

overall there was no strong bias.

In terms of action, however, 66% agree/strongly agree that they have taken action

as a direct or indirect result of using the website, with an overall bias showing

agreement overall. The interview data also shows some positive responses to the

action question; “The things like attending meetings! I wouldn’t even know the

meetings were on if it hadn’t been for Broadband Cumbria.“

Overall, action seems to be the dominant feature in this case, rather than the other

typical features of participation identified by Brodie et al. This may be due to the

fact that online participation has different defining features, or it may be an anomaly

of this community.

Social Influence, Reach and Affinity, can be indicated by the size of social

networks, and the strength of interpersonal ties as discussed by Maggi (2009).

Investigating these issues via the questionnaire, show that in terms of frequency

offline discussions about rural broadband score highly for both strong-tie and weak-

tie networks, between regularly (monthly) and frequently (weekly). Estimated reach

is an impressive 930% higher online than offline.

So, what does success, in terms of the use of online social media to promote

volunteer engagement look like in this case? There is less activity and traffic on the

website now than there was at the beginning of the year, and no community has yet

achieved installing additional or improved broadband; is the campaign losing its

momentum?

The perception of the respondents to the questionnaire is very positive, with 55%

agreeing/strongly agreeing that the website has had a positive impact on the

campaign for broadband in the Eden Valley, and agreement overall. The

interviewees also indicate that they feel the website has enhanced the campaign:

“It’s enhanced, without a question.. We as I said, I got a lot from it at the

beginning..” “I think it was an essential early part of the system that has been



created... “ “I think it’s enhanced it. But yes, on the whole it enhanced it quite a

lot.”

A number of online social media have been provided via the

broadbandcumbria.com website and they have been used frequently by an active

and committed online community over the past year. The level of activity has

dropped from an initial high, but continues at a steady lower rate. The online

community perceives its use of online social media as provided by

broadbandcumbria.com as positive in its impact on, and as enhancing, the

campaign for rural broadband in the Eden Valley. The question for the community

now is how it can build from this position and move forward into the future.

“I also use it [social media] for broadbandcumbria quite a bit in the

beginning, a year ago because I know nothing, I knew no-one. And I wanted

to find out as much as I could and it was marvellous.”



8 Conclusions In this case study of online social media as provided and used on the

broadbandcumbria.com website, a broad, deep set of data from different sources

has been collected and used to examine in detail the activity, behaviour, opinions,

perception and experiences of the members of the online community and users of

the website. The literature, whilst providing a number of related themes and

frameworks, did not provide a prescriptive theoretical model to replicate, but instead

gave a valuable sense of direction that informed the approach of this study.

The online community, as represented by the respondents and interviewees, show

many positive predictors for online engagement as identified in previous work such

as that carried out in the United States by Correa, Hinsley & Gil de Zuniga (2010),

and are highly participatory offline. They use social media and communicate widely

online, and offline via both weak and strong-tie networks. This is not perhaps

surprising, at it is the most engaged of the community who are likely to have

responded and been active both on the website and in their communities. What

might be considered surprising is that such a number of people could be brought

together in an area with poor broadband and such a sparse population.

The case study has found that the online community members tend to take action,

but are not confident that the website represents the ambitions of their

communities. There are concerns about dilution of energy, duplication of work, and

pointless discussion for the sake of discussion. There are complex technical issues

and commercial models to be communicated, secrecy and changes of plan

happening offline. Is it surprising that such a group of people would form an online

community in such a sparsely populated area? It is possible that the key to

catalysing online engagement initially was the strong offline network in the area.

The vision of the local MP in commissioning and launching the website must be

acknowledged too, for without the website there would be no

broadbandcumbria.com online community.

So, what does success, in terms of the use of online social media to promote

volunteer engagement, look like in this case? There is less activity and traffic on the

website now than there was at the beginning of the year, and no community has yet

achieved installing additional or improved broadband. The perception of the

community is that the website has had a positive impact on the campaign for



broadband in the Eden Valley, and individuals feel that the website has enhanced

the campaign.

It should be noted, that the views of other interested parties, such as the County

Council, Broadband Delivery UK, commercial provides, more local people not

involved online, and the local MPs, have not been taken into account in this study.

Additional case studies exploring similar online communities in other regions and

with different aims would be useful in helping to develop models that are

generalisable.

What can be learned from Eden Valley that could be applied to similar campaigns in

other rural communities? There is a wealth of experience now in the online

community of braodbandcumbria.com, and a number of thoughtful, reflective people

who are excited about the idea of sharing their experience for the benefit of others.

The apparent improbability of effectively using online social media to promote a

campaign for better broadband does not appear to have had the negative impact

that might have been expected, however there is evidence that the broadband is

not poor everywhere, and that it is slow or unreliable rather than non-existent.

In exploring the case of the use of online social media to support the campaign for

Next Generation Access broadband services to rural communities in the Eden

Valley in Cumbria, both a Big Society Vanguard area and Broadband Delivery UK

Pilot, it is hoped that other communities and campaigns can learn from the research

findings in order to pursue their aims more effectively. Although there cannot be

any generalised conclusions inferred from this research, this case study is hopefully

an additional positive outcome of the campaign for rural broadband.



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Appendix A

Maps

Cumbria County, UK

Eden District, Cumbria



Eden Valley, Cumbria Big Society Vanguard Area



Appendix B

The Eden Declaration

(source: www.broadbandcumbria.com)

Eden Declaration

This is a ‘living document’.

What should we add? What should we remove?

How can we improve it?

Join the discussion about its contents by clicking here.

Summary

We the parishes of rural Cumbria hereby declare that isolation is the greatest threat to the sustainability of rural

communities; and that better communication is vital to our society, to government services and to our economy.

We are, therefore, determined to overcome the barriers of distance by installing the best superfast broadband in Europe.

● We want 100Mbps fixed connections for the majority of people in rural Cumbria and universal mobile broadband

coverage by 2012

● We aim to make at least 30 of our parishes into hyper-connected communities by 2012

● We will ensure that no one is left behind. While not everybody will share 100Mbps connections, every last dwelling

in rural Cumbria will have access to 2 Mbps by 2012 and 30 Mbps by 2015

We recognise that we, the parishes of rural cumbria, must play a leading role in this process:

● Each parish will appoint a broadband champion responsible for driving our campaign

● We will aim to bring everyone in our parish online

● We will, where necessary, contribute our own labour and time, from digging trenches to negotiating concessions

on wayleaves, to deliver superfast broadband more quickly and cheaply

● We will work with suppliers to reduce their costs

● We will build our own networks where necessary

Articles

1. Social and political life is based on communication. Isolation and lack of communication undermine the lives of

communities and the efficiency of government

2. Communication increasingly depends on excellent data transport and access to the public Internet and all other

interconnected networks. This we call ‘connectivity’

3. The basis of connectivity is data, whose throughput and quality must be sufficient to allow all critical applications to

work reliably and predictably

4. Connectivity is a limited, shared resource. The use of connectivity has no limits, except those that guarantee that

other members of our community enjoy equal access

5. Connectivity exists for the general good. Citizens cannot fully explore their potential if they are isolated from one

another, or isolated from information, education, and communication services. Everyone must have access to adequate

connectivity

7. Geographical conditions may prevent an individual from enjoying the same level of service as is available elsewhere,

but everyone in rural Cumbria should be able to achieve sufficient connectivity

We, the communities of rural Cumbria, define sufficient connectivity as

8. The connectivity speeds given in the European Commission’s Digital Agenda 2020: an expectation of 100Mbps and

a minimum of 30Mbps at the edge of the network

9. A mobile broadband service capable of supporting home working applications and life support applications in the

most rural areas



10. As the peak hour resources available to each user across the entire network, not a mere theoretical ‘up-to speed’ in

the access component of the network

11. Capable of supporting real-time video telephony in the busy period

12. A TV terrestrial Broadcast network that delivers all channels to all customers

We, the communities of rural Cumbria, expect

13. Mobile operators to build and operate one network, sharing resources and radio spectrum between them to offer

complete coverage

14. Fixed operators to run fibre networks deep (backhaul) and wide (access) to replace existing infrastructure wherever

possible and remove all legacy network costs

15. All operators to make available the full potential of universal connectivity and not seek to create scarcity from a

plentiful resource

We, the communities of rural Cumbria, expect

16. The VOA to zero rate all communication installations until these installations achieve the same volume as achieved

in urban areas

17. Ofcom to fulfil its duties under the Communication Act 2003 to ensure that communications services are made

available to rural users and to ensure that efficient use is made of the radio spectrum for all users, not just those living

in densely populated areas

18. Central government to invest in communications infrastructure in rural areas in order to transform public service

delivery in areas such as health care, social care, education, community capacity building, and economic development

19. Local authorities to facilitate construction upgrades including roadside digs and to assist central government in its

efforts to transform public service delivery in areas such as health care, social care, education, community capacity

building, and economic development

In return, we, the communities of rural Cumbria, will

20. Work with our neighbours to stimulate and aggregate demand, including mass migration of all customers to the new

connectivity platforms, allowing old platforms and costs to be retired

21. Provide access to land and power sources for communications equipment

22. Negotiate concessions on wayleaves

23. Provide resources for the construction of civil infrastructure in accordance with best practice

In return, we, the communities of rural Cumbria, will

24. Work with suppliers to reduce their cost of connection by using our own resources to complete access networks

25. Build our own networks where the demand and wherewithal exists

26. Continue to refine requirements, particularly the convergence of fixed and mobile resources

27. Partake in publicity events to promote the benefits of a fully connected community

28. Work with central and local government to transform public service delivery in areas such as health care, social

care, education, community capacity building, and economic development

29. Become the first rural communities in Britain and Europe to move entire parishes tonext generation access.

Author: the communities of Cumbria



Appendix C

Google Analytics Data for the Broadbandcumbria.com Website

1 December 2010 – 20 September 2011



Appendix D

Wordpress Activity Data for the Broadbandcumbria.com Website

1 December 2010 – 20 September 2011

The broadbandcumbria.com website is based on an installation of Wordpress. The raw activity data consists of 3,731 lines and was provided as a csv file. The following charts provide a summary of the data.



Appendix E

Small-Scale Online Questionnaire



Appendix F

Small Scale Online Questionnaire Results



Q9. Via the internet Q9. Face to face or telephone

0 0

5 4

5 5

5 5

6 6

12 8

15 10

15 10

20 12

30 20

50 20

50 20

50 20

50 25

70 25

75 25

100 30

100 30

100 50

100 50

100 50

150 50

200 50

250 100

1000 100

2000 200

3000 300

5000 300

10000 900



Q11. If you have any feedback or comments you would like to make please add them here: - Open-Ended Responses: I am BB champion for Cliburn and Chairman of EVD. I'm not at all convinced that the buttons registered anything although I have answered every question. I believe that the site was invaluable as a means of galvanising support and generating interest but that has far less relevance now. Helen - some of my responses may seem 'odd'! Anything relating to Eden doesn't impact upon me particularly as I live in Allerdale and therefore not well placed to make comments on other areas. I am also a Maryport Town Councillor and Parish Broadband Champion. I created the Maryport Broadband Campaign micro-site myself without any guidance or direction from the Council - a wee bit naughty - but we would never have passed 'square one' if we had waited to do this by committee! I have also written a number of letters which have been published in the local newspaper 'Times & Star' - but these can go county wide. So, difficult to tell the numbers we have reached! Good luck with the research! The survey seemed to be more about Cumbria broadband website than social media in general. Was this the intent? Thanks Helen, I would be interested to see the survey results if you would consider sharing them on the BBCumbria site? While the initial intention of the website was sound it has become less useful since the process has been taken over by BDUK and the County council as many of the initial participants have been sidelined. A lot of the initial enthusiasm for local get up and go has been lost as too much talk of multi millions and big business involvement has overshadowed the local efforts. Big Government has won over Big Society and stopped things happening rather than assisted. Thank you. Broadband Cumbria has not kept pace with the progress made by ECCBF, in terms of securing community representation in the main procurement process, directly negotiating concessions with suppliers in the bid process. The real action has move off this page. I'm from Cumbria (Grasmere) but currently live 200 miles away (Peterborough). This website is purely for Eden and ignores the needs of the rest of Cumbria. If Rory Stewart wasn't paying for it from his expenses, it wouldn't exist. Hi Helen I think the website would have had more impact if creating a local blog had been made easier for communities. I also think the vocal people (like me I am afraid) who were told to shut up early on should have been left to keep putting stuff on it, as it stimulated debate and informed others, even if they didn't contribute. Since we stopped commenting everything has dried up. I also think commercial interests shouldn't have used it as an advertising platform or targeted communities who asked for help, but hey, this is the real world so these things happen. All in all I think the site served a purpose. Its a bit past it now, and the site owners don't engage. they just use it to park stuff which isn't always correct anyway. ie the crap mapping and ofcom data. that's my fourpennorth. x Have I used the site more or less frequently over the last 12 months? Less. Is that a direct result of lack of interest? NO! But it is a result of CCC's actions in refusing to use the website as a co-ordination point and instead setting up their own site. I think you would find many others are using it less as it seems to have passed below the crunch point of critical mass required to be an online community. Interesting survey questions though.



Appendix G

Semi-Structured Interview Pro-forma and Questions

Introduction:

The purpose and structure of the research project.

Explanation of the contribution of the interviews to the project.

The interview is composed of thirteen questions directed at exploring perceptions

rather than fact finding.

Clarify issues of anonymity and confidentiality.

Ask for permission to record and to be transcribed anonymously.

Discuss the possibility of clarifying points as they arise.

Pre recording questions:

Are you a member of the broadbandcumbria.com community website?

Are you a parish broadband champion?

Are you a hub coordinator?

Recording starts:

1. How would you describe your interest in the Eden Valley?

2. What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of rural communities?

3. What do you think the main advantages of access to the internet are for you

personally?

4. How would you describe your use of online social media?

5. How do you imagine improved broadband access might change the future for

rural communities?

6. How did you first hear about the broadbandcumbria.com website?

7. What do you imagine the aims, or motivations, of the people regularly using the

website have been over the past year?

8. What do you feel you have learned about rural broadband and the related issues

from other members of the website?

9. In what ways do you feel you have contributed to other members of the website?

10. Do you feel that using the online social media has had an impact on your impact

on your involvement with the rural broadband campaign?

11. In your view has the Broadband Cumbria Community website enhanced or

impeded the campaign for rural broadband?



12. With hindsight, do you think online social media could have been used more

effectively?

13. Is there anything else that you would like to add to what you have said already?



Appendix H

Semi Structured Interview Transcripts

To preserve confidentiality personal names (apart from those of people referred to

and acting in a professional capacity) have been removed. Place names and

names of organisations have been included. Memo numbers refer to the audio

source files.

INTERVIEW 1

Memo 22

Q1. INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your interest in the Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, OK. Well, actually, I got into this through Rory Stewart

MP specifically, because I was working at Harvard University where he was the

Director of Carr Centre for Human Rights. When I got back to England roughly the

same time as he did I was aware that I was going to be moving into the area of

Digital Humanities and so on and so forth and I noticed that he was doing this

project to bring broadband to Cumbria. So it’s really through Rory himself that I got

interested in the project and then obviously became interested in the Valley Project

specifically.

Q2. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. Thank you. And what do you see as the strengths

and weaknesses of rural communities?

INTERVIEWEE: Rural communities?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, a bit like the Eden Valley.

INTERVIEWEE: In what sense?

INTERVIEWER: In terms of what’s different about a rural community, say,

than an urban one? In terms of what they have going for them and what they are

facing in terms of their difficulties.

INTERVIEWEE: Broad question I suppose. I mean we are talking about the

ease of access to the internet?

INTERVIEWER: That’s one of them.

INTERVIEWEE: Or the characteristics of the community?

INTERVIEWER: The characteristics of the community, I would say.

INTERVIEWEE: OK. I suppose the main difference I would perceive between

rural and urban communities.. is probably just.. I suppose the level of community if

you want to call it that .. which I guess is what you are aiming at here. In the sense

that, you know they probably have a higher level of communication between one

another and despite, you know, their distance and so on .. it’s more close knit if you



like. That would be my perception of the main difference between rural and urban

communities.

INTERVIEWER: And the difficulties they might face?

INTERVIEWEE: OK. I suppose one could say that if you have a close knit

community or you aspire to be that obviously remoteness, distance, low population

density could potentially inhibit that. Leading on to possible need for better

communications.

Q3. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. What do you think the main advantages to access

to the internet are for you personally?

INTERVIEWEE: I think largely it is communications. I would say that it puts

me in good touch with people that I really would not be in touch with otherwise.

Obviously it’s a good networking tool as well. I mean, you know, we are here today

because of the internet, for example. So those are the principal reasons. Following

on from that I would say, you know, I do enjoy being, you know, up to date on

developments in my field which is inherently online as I work in Digital Humanities

and so on and that is where the progress happens. Certainly not in print

publication.

INTERVIEWER: So not in print. And how about things like education or day to

day living? Do you see it as a positive?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah I mean it’s just different. There is just more potential

there for different sort of companies and markets and so on. You know, we can

shop online. Education I think is less developed. I think there is lots of potential

there. There is certainly a lot of information, but you know.. it’s not been particularly

refined yet.

Q4. INTERVIEWER: And how would you describe your use of online social

media?

INTERVIEWEE: It’s, I would say, probably fairly limited actually. I don’t use it

unless I have a very good reason. I don’t for example... I mean I am on Facebook..

I prefer something like LinkedIn, because it is very straightforward, it’s a

professional engagement experience. I don’t go on to Facebook and say “I’ve just

had a cup of tea”, you know, “What do you think?” you know. It’s not.. that’s not

what I do. Every now and then I would share something of interest. And I try and

use Facebook actually generally for more professional reasons. Though I find I

often can’t because of the nature of the medium. Yeah, I don’t think there is any

more for me to add.

INTERVIEWER: So do you use Twitter?



INTERVIEWEE: No, I actually [do] use it.. We have a library Twitter.. Actually

specifically Digital library Twitter account. So I get updates on there. But I am not

particularly proficient with it. I went on to that because I wanted to know how it

worked. But I don’t.. I guess relating to my comments on about Facebook I don’t

feel particularly inclined to tweet, because that sort of level of communication isn’t

something I particularly... particularly go for. I do find it a very useful resource to go

to experts.. I guess I could consider myself yet to have, to be an expert or to be..

have a level of engagement with.. with my professional community that would lead

to sufficient reliable information that I’d wish to share it in that way

INTERVIEWER: I understand.

INTERVIEWEE: I do blog.

INTERVIEWER: Oh do you?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Ah, that’s interesting. I think that’s a big commitment

INTERVIEWEE: It is a big commitment and I am not great at doing it, but I find

that writing a few paragraphs is much more my thing.

INTERVIEWER: Yes

INTERVIEWEE: Over a period of few days rather than shouting out every two

hours.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, understood. And do you belong to any other...just as

part of the online social media question... Have you joined any other kind of online

action groups any other group websites memberships where you are part of the

community?

INTERVIEWEE: Not in such a formal way. I do engage with a project called

Desperate Group Projects that are run by my friend in Pakistan.

INTERVIEWER: All right. That’s..

INTERVIEWEE: Which is very interesting for me and I do a lot of work on my..

I mean my engagement with the project is solely online.. Even with him, he is a

good friend, but is solely online..

INTERVIEWER: Yes..

INTERVIEWEE: And then all the people that I.. I guess I do this informal PR

for him and get in touch with people who may be interested in his work in the US

and the UK. I’ve never actually been to Pakistan. As much as I’d like to go.. So

that is something else that I do, but it is not the same kind of a site, I mean.. It’s

not.. It’s a few projects that are online, but it’s not the same.

Q6. INTERVIEWER: It’s not the same kind of thing. Yes, I understand. And how

did you first hear about Broadband Cumbria website? Can you remember?



INTERVIEWEE: Yeah. I..well, after I’ve been in touch with Rory Stewart, and

told him about what I was interested in.. I sort of volunteered to go and dig cable..

That was my idea of how I wanted to engage with the Commissioning and he said

“Well, that’s great! I’ll put, you know, Louis in touch”. So Louis (Molsey) did get in

touch and said hey you know we are launching this website, you know, tomorrow.

It was very soon and maybe you would like to start a group? So I thought OK, well

that sounds great, I‘ll do it, so that was the process I jumped on right at the

beginning.

INTERVIEWER: Right from the start..

INTERVIEWEE: Yep.

Q7. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. And the people that.. I mean, what do you imagine

the aims or motivations are for the people that have been regularly using the

Broadband Cumbria website?

INTERVIEWEE: Well, there is a sense that I get that, you know, we have a

number of very sort of talented individuals who are on there, providing some very

interesting information...

MEMO 23

INTERVIEWEE: continued: ...regarding technical aspects and political

aspects of the project, for me it is very informative and, you know, I think there

seems to be an agenda for the website where it does inform the community on

these sort of situations and circumstances. So it’s a great resource I think if you

want to know what’s happening, where/how. You know, I think it also provides

glossary/terminology. So it is very much raising awareness of the issues, and how

you can engage with them.

Q8. INTERVIEWER: And what do you feel you have learned about broadband and

the related issues from other members of the site?

INTERVIEWEE: I think it’s probably mostly .. yeah, it’s combination of political

and technical factors to do with implementing broadband in localities like Eden

Valley. It is a bit frustrating because I can go there and sort of apply these things

on the ground, so you know.. I am at a distance, I am reading about it, so I am

learning up to a point but I am not applying any of it. I am sort of – interested.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s educational?

INTERVIEWEE: So it’s educational, yeah, educational I suppose.

Q9. INTERVIEWER: And in what ways do you feel you’ve contributed to other

members of the site. I mean, you started a group, did you?

INTERVIEWEE: I started a group and I just called it Benefits of Broadband. I

guess it would more relate to the broader policy issues to do with broadband. I



mean, I am obviously not directly involved with broadband professionally. You

know, I just use the internet. So I guess, for me I was fairly struck throughout the

project thus far by, you know, some comparisons between UK broadband initiatives

and other things going on in Australia and the US in particular. You know, I felt that

the UK initiative was extremely limited in supervision which was a shame, you

know, because obviously this sort of thing required massive investment. So I think

one of the dominant strands of the material I was introducing was just to say there

is more too this than one might think. You know, based on what the government

says.. you know, what the government will only talk about business interests.. in

fact there is masses more and you know of course Rory (Stewart) has himself, you

know, in the House of Commons and elsewhere talked a lot about, you know, these

various different benefits obviously helped them in the community engagement in

government and so on, but unfortunately government top level seemed to get lost

so otherwise, yeah I guess, you know, I wasn’t really sure how I could help really so

I did create this slightly fuzzy .. fuzzy group, you know, where, you know, it was just

a forum for talking about what the potentials of the internet in a place like this could

be. That was the aim.

Q10. INTERVIEWER: And then do you feel that using the online social media has

had an impact on your involvement with the rural broadband campaign?

INTERVIEWEE: It’s remained fairly regular. I mean since it began obviously,

because, you know, I think what I had hoped for and obviously what I suggested

with my initial engagement with Rory (Stewart) at this was that I was hoping this

would lead to the grounds kind of involvement and I know Lewis ..mentioned an

interest in possibly at some point engaging in a national... the national group

outside of the area to come in and get involved and, you know, I think that would be

a really great thing that the website could facilitate..so hopefully that would happen

at some point.

Q11. INTERVIEWER: So in your view has the Broadband Cumbria Community

website enhanced or impeded the campaign for rural broadband?

INTERVIEWEE: No, I can’t really say

INTERVIEWER: You don’t really... you don’t want to comment?

INTERVIEWEE: I don’t think I can .. I mean all I’ve seen is just these ..these

reports. And, you know, without going and really talking to people as you have the

privilege of doing, you know, I just can’t say.

Q12. INTERVIEWER: And then, with hindsight, do you think online social media

could have been used more effectively?



INTERVIEWEE: I mean possibly, like I’ve said before. I think, you know, it

would have been nice to sort of acknowledge the national relevance more. Though,

you know, who knows I don’t know what the perspective would be from local

community on that, you know. They obviously want to do it themselves. And, you

know .. it’s of great interest

INTERVIEWER: There is nothing glaring.. nothing .. no strong opinion.. on

something .. on opportunities missed or anything.

INTERVIEWEE: Not particularly, again.. you know, you would have to be

there to know what it is really you are lacking.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think the LinkedIn group would have been a good

idea? Just to get right back to what you said about your preference for LinkedIn as

a more professional...

INTERVIEWEE: Sure, I don’t know, you know, how many people we have

potentially lost from having the format we’ve had .. I don’t know.. I mean the website

has been great.. you know, at times it had some technical issues, I don’t find them

particularly easy to work with .. as I am sure a lot of people will say. It has.. it

seems to have been developed, you know, fairly regularly over the last .. in a year ..

but yeah, I think a slightly slicker website.. this can be constantly addressed .. it

does seem to have retained pretty much the same format until now. But yeah,

nothing obvious.

Q13. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else that you would like to add to what you

have said already?

INTERVIEWEE: Probably not.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW 2

(MEMO 8)

Q1. INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your interest in Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE: Quite deep. Family related and locally embedded, I suppose.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s a bit of personal connection?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, very much so.

Q2.INTERVIEWER: What do you see as the strength and the weaknesses of the

rural communities?

INTERVIEWEE: I think the strengths are that they tend to be quite self reliant

and very heavily networked and lots of people, everybody knows everybody else.

And lots of people are active in ways that might surprise you.

INTERVIEWER: Can you give an example?



INTERVIEWEE: Example – hedge trimming. You’ve probably noticed how all

hedges look beautiful, so there is somebody responsible for trimming these hedges

and they get it done. Mowing.. mowing the church yard, that sort of thing. There

are lots of volunteer tasks happening all the time.

INTERVIEWER: Just embedded in the cycle of life..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it’s the way things work. If people didn’t give their time

and effort and skills, it would look a very different place, it would be a different

place.

INTERVIEWER: So if it’s not maintained by the Council, or the municipal

board or..

INTERVIEWEE: Well, some things are no .. some things are probably, and I

am not sure quite to what extent they are, but other things aren’t. Things like the

church yard not. It’s volunteers that do that. A lot of the grass verges around the

villages where there aren’t sheep are trimmed by the volunteers. A lot of the social

infrastructure is maintained by volunteers as well. And they may be related

professionally somehow to it, or have professional skills from a previous life that

they brought to it. But generally things are conducted at quite a high level of

proficiency by volunteers.

INTERVIEWER: That’s really interesting. So it’s voluntary but it’s professional

at the same time.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it’s at high level of quality. And that was news to me

because I have been out in the world, I’ve been away, and I’ve come back to it and

I am impressed at the degree of the professionalism that is applied in the amateur

volunteerism. Also another thing the networking, there are .. it’s almost like HiFi in

the... messages can get out and get around very very effectively, orally, by

telephone..just by something called ‘craik’. Do you know ‘craik’?

INTERVIEWER: No.

INTERVIEWEE: It’s the Cumbrian – gossip basically, it’s the chain of

communication. They call it ‘craik’, they’ll ask each other ‘What’s the craik?’ and

then it will be passed on. So there is very good communication infrastructure in

place. Social Network.

INTERVIEWER: Between villages or within villages?

INTERVIEWEE: Within villages and within family groups. Clans from village to

village. I think the clan system is an interesting way to look at it.

INTERVIEWER: It’s very interesting.

INTERVIEWEE: For example family groups. There are certain families that

are very - very well connected throughout Leith-Lyvennet area and wider too. It’s



hard to talk about somebody without the person you are talking to knowing them or

being related to them. So that’s really advantageous. Now I think the second

part...

INTERVIEWER: The weaknesses.

INTERVIEWEE: The weaknesses. Now one of the weaknesses is that

everyone is quite busy. Lots of people are very busy. So there is not a lot of ..

INTERVIEWER: Capacity to take on more things..?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. This is like an ecology and it’s an old ecology. So all

the ecological niches are filled unless somebody drops out or dies and it becomes

absent. It becomes a vacancy. So in that sense things have been very much at

equilibrium. Now your work talks about the status quo, and this is very interesting

because we are in a time of great social change at the moment and what we have

here is a very well established order of life and these changes are putting pressure

on that order. There is demographic change as well where people are changing

and a lot of the stalwarts are either dropping out from their health or dropping dead

or having to move out because they are elderly and they’ve got to move to a care

home or something. So there is a sense of threat hanging over us, this is how I see

it.

INTERVIEWER: Right..

INTERVIEWEE: There is quite.. there is quite a lot of risk that some of the old

order won’t be maintained.

INTERVIEWER: So there is no one there to step up?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, because they are very busy. As staff are cutting jobs for

example, there are less people doing the work in any given job, so most people

now are doing at least one and a half jobs or two jobs, as back in the eighties. So

they’ve been squeezed and there is an expectation that people are going to take on

more roles, just at the precise time where they are cutting things back and making it

less difficult for people to do it. And in one sense redundancies are quite

stimulating for the economy, because you get somebody out, you’re going to have

a big cash wedge, and then say “OK, start a new life!” So those people might be

very helpful and useful but.. well, it depends how much confidence they’ve got to

devote that free time, at the time they might prefer to be job hunting or building up a

business, if they are doing those two things then they are not in the game for

volunteering. If they are very successful the chances are they are snowed under

with work and ‘nailed to the floor’ as the expression I often hear ‘No sorry, I can’t

help, I am nailed to the floor!’ So there is that tension as well.

INTERVIEWER: It’s fantastically interesting!



INTERVIEWEE: It is! It’s very interesting and it’s going to.. well, it will be

interesting to see how better internet eases the situation or makes it more

complicated.

Q3. INTERVIEWER: Yes, I can see that! So, what would you say the main

advantages of internet access are for you personally for you as an individual?

INTERVIEWEE: Definitely in the commu.. mass communicating and in

communicating with remote...people who are remote. So it’s..

INTERVIEWER: So it’s your preferred method of communication, is it really?

Rather than a telephone, or..?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.. With the telephone there is a sense of additional cost

which I have to be very careful of.. so in the evenings and things that’s not a

consideration because it is free evenings and evening calls - my package is, but

during the day time I’ve got to watch out for that and especially with mobiles

because they can beat you to death. So that’s ..that’s...

INTERVIEWER: That’s communication you see as the main...

INTERVIEWEE: Yes..

INTERVIEWER: ..thing that you personally...I mean that.. you at your

businesses ..with business..

INTERVIEWEE: My business is not very successful..so that’s interesting.. my

volunteering..

MEMO 18

INTERVIEWEE: continued: .. volunteering it actually.. dominates my life.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I understand that, yes.

INTERVIEWEE: So, to an extent I do have some customers who are waiting

for work to be done and they are still waiting. They are very gentle and nice. And

these are slightly superfluous projects they are not essential to them, but it’s

starting to get embarrassing. So that’s.. something as well.. but I’m also doing this

in a non.. in a selfish sense, because I know that my business would be benefitting

greatly with more people online and using the internet. So it’s not all altruistic at all.

INTERVIEWER: No-no, there is a definite practical, pragmatic underpinning.

INTERVIEWEE: Very much so, yeah.

Q4. INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your own use of social media

online? What do you tend to prefer?

INTERVIEWEE: It’s.. I tend to use, I tend to use box quite a lot, because with

the Cumbria Neighbourhood watch this information coming in and that goes up.

Very regularly. I tend to use e-mail massively – e-mail is my preferred means of

communication. Telephone is very good for actually on the fly adaptation and



things. One problem with e-mail is it’s ping-pong, whereas with telephone you’ve

got..

INTERVIEWER: Much more creative.. Much more spontaneous..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and you can get good reactions.. well you can test

people’s reactions. With e-mails, people get that and think it’s that or nothing..

INTERVIEWER: Yes-yes, black and white..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.. whereas with a phone call you can..

INTERVIEWER: Explore..?

INTERVIEWEE: ..with just your intonation.. you can suggest it is not set in

stone.. that it’s not.. that you are not sure whether that’s the best approach or

whatever.

INTERVIEWER: Do you Skype online, or is the connection not good enough?

INTERVIEWEE: I used to Skype a lot with my brother, but I can’t use it much

with anybody here. Even with technorati...they don’t use Skype. Now there are two

reasons for this, I think. One is that it is not seen as a secure medium. Even

though e-mail is not as secure either, but all kinds of secrets are passed by e-mail

that wouldn’t be delivered over Skype, which is fascinating to me.

INTERVIEWER: It’s very interesting isn’t? Very interesting.

INTERVIEWEE: Another.. one of the big problems is for mass communication,

we can’t tell everybody everything by e-mail because lots of people aren’t on the

internet. So we have to look at the conventional.. we have to use the conventional

ways of communicating and the e-mail because of our reliance on e-mail, ‘mine’ I

should speak for myself, I tend to be able to think I’ve got more latitude than I have

for an error because I can follow up one e-mail with ‘Oh my god, sorry I said

Tuesday, I meant Wednesday!’ Whereas you can’t do that very easily with a..

INTERVIEWER: If it’s gone out..

INTERVIEWEE: If it’s gone out.. so ..onto the bus shelters or in a newsletter!

You’re stumped, you’ve got the whole month to wait until you say ‘Oops sorry, I

meant Wednesday!’ So you have to be very much more careful and correct. Well,

obviously we are trying to be correct and careful anyway, but there is no..

INTERVIEWER: There is no recall..

INTERVIEWEE: ..no letters.. yes..

INTERVIEWER: And in terms of other.. other kind of campaign type sites,

forum type sites, like Broadband Cumbria do you use any others for any other

interests you have?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, I try to make some!

INTERVIEWER: Oh right!



INTERVIEWEE: One of them is the Lyvennet ValleyCommunity.org and that is

our local community microsite, and this.. there is an interesting interplay with this

and BroadbandCumbria too. Because initially I thought I’d put all our broadband

information on that site but then BroadbandCumbria came up and it obviously made

a lot more sense to use that. But I needed to keep the other one going anyway..

INTERVIEWER: ..so you then you have to maintain two..

INTERVIEWEE: And it’s easy to forget to update one, and you end up with the

sort of messages that are specifically for our local people are better on our site

rather than putting them up on BroadbandCumbria.

INTERVIEWER: So there is this.. there’s tension between BroadbandCumbria

which is a more global view and then more local view..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Things like spam are interesting as well. I was just

saying now, so that perhaps later we could talk about how we could deal with spam

on something like BroadbandCumbria. Because some comments are valid but

there are not local. Other comments are just weird, obviously could be trashed.

And there are lots of spambots. Every now and then there are humans, and those

humans maybe not local.. very few locals are using the comments ..very few, to a

point where it’s almost worth putting up a message saying ‘Email me if you’ve got

something to say to me and then I’ll post your comment’ rather than me trolling

through all this spambot trash.. it’s just..

INTERVIEWER: It’s one of the problems..

INTERVIEWEE: Other sites.. other networking sites.. My brother’s.. I started a

blog for my brother.. I started a blog for a chap called Steve Hollier who’s ex British

Council and working in Azerbaijan. He’s just died recently..

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I’m sorry.

INTERVIEWEE: Unfortunately, at the peak of his success which is tragic. But

it also left me with an interesting…

INTERVIEWER: Dilemma.

INTERVIEWEE: ..thought of continuance and continuity because we tend to

think of ourselves as permanent features but we are very much are not and the

more I build up.. I mean who is going to take it over from me? Would anyone?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.. What.. how’s.. the legacy behind it?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, so that’s a lot to think about. If with something like

Broadband Cumbria, there’s a huge base, so somebody is more likely to decide to

step in.

Q5. INTERVIEWER: That’s true. And then, how do you imagine the improved

broadband access might change the potential future for rural communities?



INTERVIEWEE: I think it would be revolutionary. I think it will be amazing. It’ll

save tons of CO2, I think the travel time will be cut remarkably. I can’t really

express how important I think it is. It could be massive. Just learning what’s going

around the place it’s amazing. About four years ago I remember in despair saying

to somebody ‘There is nothing going on around here. Nothing! It’s dead! What’s

happening? Nothing!’ Now I know that tons of stuff is happening and it has been

happening all along.

INTERVIEWER: It’s just hard to find.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Our communities are dots on the map, really the

internet is going to connect us like neurons in the brain. And, just connections that

come up from.. for example, you know, this area is going to be designated for a

National Park status.

INTERVIEWER: Oh yes, I’ve heard some discussion about that.

INTERVIEWEE: It’s likely that it’ll go ahead.. unless it’s blocked.. but there.. I

am amazed at how people I’ve met through broadband, they are everywhere, and

their friends are everywhere and their..

MEMO 9

INTERVIEWEE: continued: it feels more like an almost an organic neural

connection which is what I was hoping the internet would evolve into.. that it would

become, it would be social evolution reality , the next stage of our social reality..

sort of ease of thought, transmission of thought ..it’s almost like telepathy that we

do have problems with spam folders.. Now this is.. It’s amazing how some really

important stuff ends up in spam folders, and I can’t see from the subject line why,

it’s just.. there is a lot of dross in there too but there is some crucial stuff and those

people don’t troll through their spam folders.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.. guilty..

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, guilty too. Yeah, sorry now what was your question?

Because didn’t I go off at.. a while..

Q6. INTERVIEWER: No no, it was a brilliant answer, really good, I mean very -

very conceptual. And then thinking back, might be hard to remember, how did you

first hear about the Broadband Cumbria.com website, can you recall?

INTERVIEWEE: It was via Louis Mosley I think, I think it was Louis Mosley

who told me about it.

INTERVIEWER: So.. face to face, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook? Hard now isn’t

it?

INTERVIEWEE: It is very hard.. I think it was probably by e-mail..



INTERVIEWER: Right, so he had your e-mail already?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes..

INTERVIEWER: And he knew you were interested?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes..

INTERVIEWER: Were you at the Great Asby meeting?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes I was.

INTERVIEWER: L was there.

INTERVIEWEE: Ah, right!

INTERVIEWER: Yes, about a year ago it was..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, that’s the first Great Asby meeting was where I first

thought about the potentiality of rural broadband being improved.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

INTERVIEWEE: Cause, I thought it was quite good, because ours here is not

bad, 6.7 megabits per second download.

INTERVIEWER: That’s better than what I get!

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah it’s great. And that’s because of Cumbria County

Council working with BT and the group called Commendium. Before, when I came

here I was stunned! My internet was faster than in Tokyo! It was incredible! I

couldn’t believe it!

INTERVIEWER: That is so not what I was expecting to hear!

INTERVIEWEE: I know!

INTERVIEWER: Because at Great Asby it was very poor. And I thought that

theirs was meant to be shining example, you see.

INTERVIEWEE: No, this is something that I’ve always born in mind as well

throughout this whole thing, was the perspective that I’ve been to other places

technologically very advanced places. And..people.. a lot of people slow their stuff

down with antivirus programmes that effectively render their speeds to next to

nothing. Now they’ve already got virus catches and protections in place, as most of

them do through their ISPs they are wasting their bandwidth. But where.. if you say

to people I think you should turn all that rot off, or be selective about what you have

up there in terms of firewalls. If you have already got a super professional firewall

in place why do you need another one there if it’s going to drag your performance

down. But of course the moment you say that their computer get blitzed.. they’re

ruined ..and you are..

INTERVIEWER: There is a lot of risk..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, that’s it. So yes, I was impressed by that. Rory Stewart

asked me to.. get.. the first I heard of the Big Society thing was through the



Community and Planning, so there was a chain of reactions. I heard there was a

Big Society Broadband meeting in Great Asby that I went along to. After that I was

asked to be a Broadband Champion and I didn’t even know what that was but I

thought it sounded like..

INTERVIEWER: It was a evolutionary role at that point probably..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, so anyway.. I said yes, so then there was a Rheged

Broadband Conference

INTERVIEWER: No, that was before, that was in September cause I was at

that too.

INTERVIEWEE: Oh was that it? There was a pre-Great Asby meeting than,

there was one before big Great Asby meeting where we had our photo taken.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: Now that small one was just focusing on what the Great Asby

Broadband group were doing. And at that point it was first suggested that it could

be extended out to first of February, I think. At least I think that’s ..

INTERVIEWER: The sequence of events?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.

Q7. INTERVIEWER: And what do you imagine the aims or motivations of the

people regularly using Broadband Cumbria have been over the year?

INTERVIEWEE: Ah, they’ve widely fluctuated. Because initially we were

talking with a group called NextGenUs and they were offering a 100 megabits per

second fired better at home up and down symmetrical and I was incredibly excited

about that. Than that sort of..

INTERVIEWER: Dream come true!

INTERVIEWEE: Outrageous! And..so that got me haring about and excited.

But gradually unfortunately we learned that there were problems and impediments

with that, and then ..

INTERVIEWER: Issues..?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.. And then of course, there was a slight.. Well not a

disappointment.. Yes, a slight disappointment that..

INTERVIEWER: Because there is an expectation..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it was also a certain degree of relief that we wouldn’t be

digging up the whole of the countryside as well, that because we had limestone

rock in some places very shallow, and that would be difficult. Each time things

change so quickly and so often, it’s unbelievable. I think this.. Last year it’s been a

series of wild changes. One moment we think something is going to happen, and

then something new has popped up or an obstacle pops up.. It’s very hard to know



what to say to anybody with any kind of confidence. So, early on Rory said to us,

really our Broadband Champions are also would be managing expectation

management.. And at first I thought ‘Oh god, that’s horrible!’ Cause that usually

means telling people they can’t have what they want. But in this case it hasn’t all

been a negative thing because quite often we are delivering incredibly good news.

And when that’s the case certainly you don’t feel like complaining. So you have to

take the rough with the smooth.. But often you have to qualify what you said at the

last Parish Council Meeting and say: ‘You know I said such and such and such. I

should not have done - that was secret.’ Or ‘You know I said such and such and

such. That’s not true, in fact. It’s only partially true.’

INTERVIEWER: There’s some other angle.

INTERVIEWEE: And it’s quite useful, people are getting used to that kind of

re..correction and re-evaluation as a norm now, rather than as a ‘..god this Baron

von Munchausen, they can’t believe anything he says.’ It’s more of a sort – ‘Oh ok,

the game has shifted’.

INTERVIEWER: It’s evolving.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, that’s it.

INTERVIEWER: So, just looking at the website without.. If kind of just facing

on the use of the website itself and the conversations that you’ve seen happening

and the comments and the.. and how do you think that’s..

MEMO 11

INTERVIEWER: continued: how do you think that’s.. why.. what do you think

motivated people to do what they’ve done and said what they’ve said, and post

what they have and comment what they have. I mean do you feel, what do you

think the range of motivations have been?

INTERVIEWEE: I think a full panoply, I think a full range. There are some

people who are in a desperate state. Their broadband is rotten, they know it’s

rotten and they are worried it will stay rotten forever. Those people are very highly

motivated. So people are motivated from business side, for example CC. She is

involved with the Fibrestream. And it’s not purely that she wants to promote her

business I think. I think she knows that what she is offering is very - very good. And

so it’s almost evangelical. LA as well, I think. So there is a lot of passionate

evangelism, technological evangelism going on. Because they also know.. it’s

almost like an enlightenment, they know what is potentially possible. They know

that people aren’t getting a glimmer of what is potentially possible. They want

them... They want to cut out they evolutionary steps, and jump to an Ubermensch

position, because they know that it is not particularly expensive to do that, and there



is good value in that rather than going through the steps. To balance that, there are

also people who know that for example a large pension hole developing that

eventually.. will bite us back in the butt if we allow it to collapse and to implode.. the

circumstances that arise will be catastrophic too so we could end up sawing off our

own legs to make our head a little bit taller. And so there is that, to balance.

INTERVIEWER: So there is a whole range basically, a whole range of

motivations?

INTERVIEWEE: A whole range. Some people just also want to make franks.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think fair comment.

INTERVIEWEE: To find out who is in the next village. And what is this

village? I’ve never heard of this place before. Mallerstang, now where is that? It

sounds like, well, something from Lord of the Rings!

INTERVIEWER: It does!

INTERVIEWEE: And it looks like it if you go!

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I’ve been through there. Beautiful, stunning, isn’t it! But

so remote!

INTERVIEWEE: Pendragon’s castle’s down that way, isn’t it?

INTERVIEWER: I have not seen that.

INTERVIEWEE: It’s beautiful little parcel. Fantastic.

INTERVIEWER: Such, such a lovely place.

INTERVIEWEE: Very wild, you can imagine dragons roosting up on those

limestone crags. So definitely there is a social aspect too. There’s a territorial

aspect I think as well which is interesting. ‘This is our patch, we are..’. It’s like these

roosters crowing,.. ‘Here we are..’

INTERVIEWER: ‘This is mine..’

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, don’t forget us as well. This is political influence..

INTERVIEWER: Just a quick diversion, this is not on my list but.. What area is

Broadband Cumbria.com designed to support?

INTERVIEWEE: Now, initially, because of my focus on Eden, I thought it was

just Eden. But it’s not, and it’s Broadband Cumbria, so basically it’s supporting to

the whole Cumbria. I’ve applied mental filters, to look for the areas that are relevant

to me.. and that I am interested in. I’ve seen people talking about what’s

happening in far more remote places, well to us, to me, on my little scooter because

I go to work by scooter. So some of these places are very far away conceptually

from me. Those places, it’s interesting to see, that they are struggling with things.

There is an old shepherd for example, who, he lives miles down the track. It’s

connected by telephone, the cost of connecting him on fibre would be just brutal,



absolutely brutal. His case, I thought, oh gosh, poor old devil, but that’s because

he’s living in the back of beyond. Since I’ve been going around physically around

our parish.. Lots of our people are in exactly the same position.

INTERVIEWER: They are not all in the centre as well, no. So even though the

centres are remote, even though the centres are spread widely, there are still these

outliers.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. And some of their tracks are sort of.. Well, you need

safari vehicles to get down there.

Q8. INTERVIEWER: What do you feel you’ve learned about rural broadband and

the related issues from other people via the website?

INTERVIEWEE: A lot. One of the things was the sense that the how wide

spread the issue is and how relatively fortunate I am too. How the different groups..

a lot of people are saying the same things.. and there is a lot of planning.. my.. I am

on half a megabit per second here and someone else is saying the same thing

too.. I had no idea for example that, you know, that the drop in speed around 3.45

when the kids go off school is a national phenomenon. I thought that was just a

local thing. And I think that is true to the other people. So we’ve learned a lot

..that..

INTERVIEWER: From that online communication?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, our situation is not remarkable really, but it is possible

to look at our situation, if we fix it we can extrapolate it to other areas.

INTERVIEWER: Right, so it does have wider benefit.

INTERVIEWEE: Definitely!

INTERVIEWER: That.. solving it here has a wider..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, that has really come across quite strongly. And I think

that as a motivation that should be listed as well, because there is a sense of

grandeur about what we are doing that otherwise we would not have. If we were

just looking at sorting out our own problems it would feel not just.. not selfish.. but it

would be limited.. whereas we know that if we get things right here.. people would

benefit in Wales, they’ll benefit in Yorkshire

INTERVIEWER: It ups the stakes.

INTERVIEWEE: All sorts.. yes, it really does up the stakes.

Q9. INTERVIEWER: And then, in what ways do you feel that you contributed to

the other members? If that’s what you‘ve learned from them, what do you feel they

might have learned from you?



INTERVIEWEE: I am not sure to what extent they actually learned anything

from me. At one stage I got very excited about the mathematics of possibilities.

Barry Ford, do you know Barry Ford?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes..

INTERVIEWEE: He came up with a brilliant plan, and it was really very..

INTERVIEWER: It was very seductive, wasn’t it?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and the reason why it didn’t work is because nobody

could understand the mathematics of it, and I couldn’t communicate the

mathematics of it but I could see that it worked. And it works on faith. The same

way our whole economy works basically. But, unfortunately, there wasn’t sufficient

faith, and he privately said: ‘We’ve got to somehow bring it to the main stream.

They think I’m some wacky old eccentric!’ And I couldn’t do it. And one of the

reasons why I couldn’t do it was because I couldn’t communicate to people the idea

of share value going up even though that’s the…

MEMO 12

INTERVIEWEE: continued: …principal basis of our stock market and our

whole economy. And that was sad, I mean, I did try to explain it on there.. But

people had doubts about it.. all those self-same doubts that are suppressing our

stock market..

INTERVIEWER: Risks..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and lack of faith. It’s a magic trick, it comes as a magic

trick and it works if you believe. If you want to believe and it doesn’t work if you

don’t want to believe. And cynicism is.. let’s face it it’s a well deserved realism.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: Has to sort of pop that bubble a bit. But that bubble is

invading again.. and there is no reason why something like that shouldn’t work .

But it’s fine that people don’t have their faith in their own bricks and water. I blame

Mervyn King, because..

INTERVIEWER: Oh, do you?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, because he ignored the whole issue of collateral with

Northern Rock. Do you remember when they first started talking about Northern

Rock’s problems?

INTERVIEWER: Long time ago now, yes.

INTERVIEWEE: There wasn’t.. nobody ever mentioned the word collateral.

INTERVIEWER: No.



INTERVIEWEE: So it’s suddenly, all the value of all the collateral earned by

Northern Rock was wiped off the face of people’s perspectives. People only

thinking of it in terms of the liability.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, but not the balance..balance sheet.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. And I heard some stink tank in London was talking

about a whole community being non-economically viable. It was some huge place..

some Northern, North Eastern city.. and I just thought that’s insane! That’s just a

fundamental lack of understanding of economics. Its value is inherent in itself. Walk

along there, touch a brick if you want, how much would it cost you to make that

brick for those people to live in there? That’s its value. And if you are going to

discount that value you are going to bring down its value. That’s precisely what

Mervyn King did, when he failed to support, well to act as a national bank should

do. If the national Bank does not lend what good is it? Evidently borrows and does

not lend.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s kind of endemic attitude and you couldn’t influence it

you felt in a way you wanted to..

INTERVIEWEE: I couldn’t convince people, I didn’t.. I lack the authority to

convince people that that’s effectively.. if they didn’t have faith in the value of their

own bricks and mortar that lack of faith would bring the value down. He would be

bringing their own value down.

INTERVIEWER: How about this idea that improved Broadband would increase

the value of property? Do you subscribe to that?

INTERVIEWEE: Very important. Very much so. Massively. I think the

properties have their value already..

INTERVIEWER: Intrinsically..

INTERVIEWEE: Intrinsically. There is something called deep-wealth. I don’t

know whether that’s a standard term.

INTERVIEWER: I’ve not heard of it.. but..

INTERVIEWEE: Well basically, I think maybe my brother pointed. I was

describing the situation here to Hugh, my brother, and he said: “The thing is, John,

that deep wealth there, but there is, no, this superficial wealth. Disposable income

is lacking..

INTERVIEWER: So, cash flow is the issue not the assets..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. But what we do have: clean water, solid walls, houses

that aren’t going to collapse.

INTERVIEWER: Right .. Enduring.. yes



INTERVIEWEE: Yes, enduring. There’s a lot of maintenance needs to be

done, but the infrastructure is there

INTERVIEWER: Is sound.

INTERVIEWEE: Is sound. Yeah. Sorry, my fault.

INTERVIEWER: No no.. I am just slightly aware.. slightly aware of your time..

and whether that’s going to keep going.

INTERVIEWEE: Sorry.

Q10. INTERVIEWER: That’s fine. So do you feel that using the online social media

has impacted your involvement in the campaign for rural broadband?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. It has, unequivocally.

INTERVIEWER: So it has had an impact on you, a positive thing.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Massively.

INTERVIEWER: Than, can you describe maybe one action you’ve taken that

you feel is directly a result of your involvement online?

INTERVIEWEE: Oh yes! The things like attending meetings! I wouldn’t even

know the meetings were on if it hadn’t been for Broadband Cumbria. And it was

Broadband Cumbria that seeing other people saying ‘I am trying to get to this

meeting’ that made me think, OK, well I will try as well but it actually is not very

convenient.. timed..

INTERVIEWER: I’ll make the effort..

INTERVIEWEE: If these people are going..

INTERVIEWER: It would be worth..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, if I don’t go then I wouldn’t know what’s going on there ..

because you know things get lost in translation. We found this very much so with

our group. For example, East Cumbria Broadband Community Group says they

can only take a certain number of people at their meetings. Otherwise it would just

fill up and it would be..

INTERVIEWER: Unmanageable.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Unfortunately this winnowing out means that, for

example, if you got a large group with people from many communities gathered, like

EVD, they can only have two people going to the CBF meetings. If there is small

community, like one village basically with outliers, they can have the same number

of people, two people.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, so it’s a question of representation, proportional

representation a lot. That’s interesting!



INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and unfortunately, this winnowing out people who do go

are then responsible for showing everything that happened. But of course they filter

it, and if they are busy which they are often, they’ll give a little boiled down version.

INTERVIEWER: And they won’t necessarily know what you were particularly

interested in knowing.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, but all the nuances are gone.

INTERVIEWER: How about.. Are they not willing to film?

INTERVIEWEE: No, because it is all secret, this is the thing.. Most of.. Early

on, this has really impacted the use of the size.. so little could be said with any

confidence, because we weren’t sure.. every.. lots of the things were hypothetical,

and just the publication of some of the things, might have steered everything off in a

different direction, it might not have been in the best interests of what I could say.

INTERVIEWER: It’s very delicate.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. ‘Say nothing’ has been a watch word for a lot of the

meetings. For a lot of the meetings..

INTERVIEWER: That really kind of contradicts this idea of the value of

communication through.. Isn’t it.. That’s a really interesting tension…

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. Now, I was told to say nothing because I would have

led people off down maybe following my own interests particularly. And the chap

who told me to say nothing.. Well, he didn’t just say ‘Say nothing’.. He said ‘look at

the way Thane behaves at these meetings. That’s a good model. So listen. Take

note. Watch. Don’t speak much. Said that when you do speak your words make

more impact. Select them well.’

INTERVIEWER: That’s very interesting! Very interesting.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and I took that to heart, because I am often seen to be

garrulous anyway, but that was a good advice.

Q11. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that’s very interesting, that’s very interesting. OK. So,

coming towards some kind of summaries here. But.. So, has

BroadbandCumbria.com Community, the community website in your view

enhanced or impeded the campaign for rural broadband?

MEMO 14

INTERVIEWEE: I think it’s enhanced it. But yes, on the whole it enhanced it

quite a lot.

Q12. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. And with hindsight, which is always a wonderful

thing, do you think the online social media aspect of this campaign could have been

used more effectively?



INTERVIEWEE: If there were certain aspects of this campaign that have been

contentious, and there have been times when my heart had sort of turned to stone..

turned to ice you know, occasionally. You’ve said something that you realise has

opened up a flank to attack. And all you can do then is just try and repair the

whole.. one of them is it’s an act of faith, because certain people say something at a

high level, and then you say it at your level and then someone attacks you with

something that you have not heard being pitched at that level.. and then you

suddenly find yourself defending a position that you don’t know enough about, and

there is a danger that if your defence is weak it’s getting bad impact on them. So

that’s an uncomfortable..

INTERVIEWER: ..position

INTERVIEWEE: And that I’m sure..

INTERVIEWER: But do you think that anything could have been done to.. to

improve that?

INTERVIEWEE: Well, my response was ‘I have a complete faith in X. So if

you got a problem with it..talk to X’.

INTERVIEWER: You need to get.. so that referring people back to the source..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, but that can be a bad thing to do because X can then

say ‘What are you doing passing all your problems to me? I was hoping you were

going to answer these ones!’ So, that didn’t happen, they never said that, but..

INTERVIEWER: So, the website as it was.. the use of the forums, and the

membership.. and the commenting and the blog.. Could..You know, if you were

starting again, you know, would you advise a different approach? Or would you go

with exactly the way it was done? Or..I mean..

INTERVIEWEE: I think id’ go with the way it was done, but I’d also.. I think..

I’d also try and.. well one of the reasons why vast numbers of my people haven’t

got.. haven’t joined Broadband Cumbria I think, is because I didn’t plug it as much

as I could.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

INTERVIEWEE: And now.. the reasons for my reticence, and there are

several reasons for it.. one was that initially I wasn’t sure whether it wasn’t just a

superfluous addition to what was already there and was doubling up and thus

diluting attentions.. The second thing was that this business of 90 per cent of

people not ..well being invisible sort of speak .. it’s a bit soul destroying. Well, not

soul destroying. If you look at a blog and it’s got tons and tons of comments and

things.. you can tell a live one.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, it’s got an energy in it.. a debate



INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and it’s alive and stuff

INTERVIEWER: Yeah..

INTERVIEWEE: That has occurred in many of the main page areas, but it

didn’t occur in the Leith-Lyvennet Broadband Group Microsite part of that.. The

only occasion where it did was when I was talking with the private company that

was almost a rival to ours.. or considered themselves.. they were worried about us

knocking away their business case by taking their customers or delaying everything

to the point where their offering was too late. Now my answer to that was that I did

a very good effort before last Christmas trying to tell people that it was a good idea

and it was well worth doing.. and that sort of fell on deaf ears.. well not deaf ears..

but here you need to drip feed information and build up and it takes time to.. I didn’t

realise that! So I thought, there it is on the plate do you want a 100 megabits per

second? And they are saying ‘Uh? What’s a megabit?’ Or..

INTERVIEWER: You’re going to have to come to it..

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, I didn’t realise that. But.. there was some real

interchange there between me and Guy Jarvis. But there wasn’t much interchange

between for example somebody saying ‘I’m Doris such and such, I live at such and

such. My broadband is rubbish, please help me out’. What there was, was people

saying ‘Oh, do you know such and such . She lives down such and such. Her

broadband is rubbish’.

INTERVIEWER: So it is more kind of word of mouth still.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it is filtered. Yes. If you go up to somebody and say ‘My

broadband is rubbish, I need your help’. You are in their.. they will be in your debt.

They’d owe you something. They don’t want to owe me anything. So..

INTERVIEWER: No.. So asking for help is not part of their culture?

INTERVIEWEE: No, their friend may say ‘Oh you know the broadband is

rubbish down at such and such’.

INTERVIEWER: And that’s fine?

INTERVIEWEE: That’s fine, because there is no chain of obligation back. So,

and that’s understandable because a lot of people are on very tight budgets.. and

what do they have to give back?

INTERVIEWER: Yes. So just so that I can summarise then in terms of.. with

hindsight, you may have encouraged more of your local community to join in the

debate online, on the main site? And that perhaps might have made it more

positive outcome?



INTERVIEWEE: No, I see a filtering process where very few of my people

have I think have actually joined Broadband Cumbria...they’ve looked at it...I don’t

think they’ve registered .. I don’t see a lot of our names.

INTERVIEWER: So in some way they haven’t felt.. made that step but it’s

unclear why..

INTERVIEWEE: Well, I think it’s my fault. I should have said to people please,

please, please, pretty please join Broadband Cumbria.. We are going to use this is

our main focus point to take stuff for our Microsite off.

INTERVIEWER: So it was a question of the duplication and the division.. and

yes, so..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, I felt territorial.

INTERVIEWER: So, if that attitude have.. if your approach than have been

replicated wider, then more.. it would have become more of a .. yeah ok..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, the reason why we only have 345 people on Broadband

Cumbria is because I think there is territoriality and that territoriality keeps people

within talking about their things in their places by their normal methods..

INTERVIEWER: (indistinct)

INTERVIEWEE: That’s my impression. Yes

INTERVIEWER: So you’ve got these conversations and you’ve got these.. a

couple of people that are linked in these conversations.. that .. there are bigger..

Yes, I understand..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, and I think newspapers and things looked at Broadband

Cumbria as well to see what was going on. And this early on this was really

exciting and we had the big Moorland meeting. Do you know about the Moorland

meeting?

INTERVIEWER: No..

INTERVIEWEE: This is where social media really helps. It helps a lot!

INTERVIEWER: When was it?

INTERVIEWEE: It was last February.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

INTERVIEWEE: And.. it was no.. sorry it was January twenty.. February the

second, because it was the day of my mum’s funeral..

INTERVIEWER: Oh..

INTERVIEWEE: And in the evening it was amazing. There were a hundred..

about a hundred of people in the hall..we were using Cumbria County Council’s

Referendum machine.



INTERVIEW 3

MEMO 1

Q1. INTERVIEWER: So to start off with, how would you describe your interest in

the Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE: I live here. I am active, very active in the community. I love

the Eden Valley.

INTERVIEWER: Have you lived here a long time?

INTERVIEWEE: No, no, lived here for 10 years. We came through holidays,

fell in love with the place, and decided to retire here.

INTERVIEWER: Fantastic.

INTERVIEWEE: 10 years ago.

Q2. INTERVIEWER: What do you see as the strengths and the weaknesses of

rural communities?

INTERVIEWEE: There is a very social interaction in villages and there is a

very strong community spirit in villages. It’s a like a huge family in a way, living in a

village in a rural area like this as opposed to an urban development.

INTERVIEWER: And the weaknesses of the rural community?

INTERVIEWEE: Isolation.

INTERVIEWER: OK, the weaknesses of rural community?

INTERVIEWEE: Isolation, lack of amenities, lack of transport, lack of shopping

facilities, basically it.

Q3. INTERVIEWER: OK, so there’s some things... yeah.. And for you personally,

what would you say were the main advantages to the internet?

INTERVIEWEE: For me personally, I’ve got two daughters, one lives in

Preston, the other lives in Southampton. Both got young families. And I use Skype

to see my grandchildren that I wouldn’t normally see. I do internet shopping

because it’s forty miles.. well it was forty miles to the nearest decent supermarket.

We now have them in Penrith which is fourteen miles away, but even at fourteen

miles it costs me a fiver to go to the supermarket. I get it delivered for less than that

and I can pick and choose what I want to buy. I do do a lot of internet shopping.

Household items, furniture, books - I buy a lot of books, I buy all my books over the

internet. I got wide choice. E-mail – I find e-mail invaluable, I’d be lost without e-

mail. I’ve got e-mail on my computer, I’ve got e-mail on my smart phone and it

keeps me in touch.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s really central.

INTERVIEWEE: It’s central. Beyond that, if my grandchildren come they’ve

got access to educational things on the internet. To me that’s of supreme



importance. Although I’m of retirement age, internet for young people is an

absolute must. And particularly in villages like ours. I can’t see.. A village like ours

needs to survive, it needs to grow, it needs to have a good demographic. It can’t

exist on people of retirement age it needs young families to come into the village to

keep it going to regenerate it. Without internet young families are not going to

move into a village. So it is essential a rural area like ours has internet connection,

and a good internet connection.

Q4. INTERVIEWER: Thanks, fantastic. And then, how would you describe your

own use of online social media?

INTERVIEWEE: I don’t use a lot of online social media. I use Twitter to follow

I don’t make Tweets.. but I do follow things that I’m interested in. As I said I’m a

Parish Councillor and I follow Eden District Council on Twitter and I get a lot of

information via.. Immediate information that I can follow up. I don’t get it from the

Tweet itself but I can get a line of contact that I can pursue it further and that

benefits me as a Parish Councillor. I follow family on Twitter. I’m not on Facebook,

I don’t particularly like Facebook. Although I think it is going to become necessary

that everybody is on Facebook because a lot of the links that I get from e-mails say

follow us on Facebook and find out the information on Facebook. I don’t particularly

like Facebook.

INTERVIEWER: And have you joined any other campaign type sites with

forums and memberships like the Broadband Cumbria site?

INTERVIEWEE: No, I joined the Broadband Cumbria site but as I said I was

not happy with it. I didn’t think it was fulfilling what it could be fulfilling. It was

getting to be a talking shop. And what the fears I had about that was that it could

take over the concept of pursuing broadband and take it away from communities.

Because it became a wider community in itself it took away the energy from the

community it was going to directly benefit. Does that make sense?

Q5. INTERVIEWER: Yes, I do understand what you’re saying. And then how do

you imagine... I think you’ve touched on this a bit already there.. imagine improved

broadband access might change the future for rural communities?

INTERVIEWEE: Oh, it makes everything instantly accessible. Well important

feature that is not generally spoken about is .. it’s going to increase house values.

If properties in a rural area have not got a good access then people are not going to

move into.. then house prices will fall. So even people who are not particularly

interested in having internet connection and going on to the internet still in their

interest that the village has got access to it, to maintain the values in their property.

And.. in isolated villages such as ours, we only got eighty households, and in



isolated.. it’s 3 miles to the nearest town, Appleby. And our library facility is there

well, Cumbria County Council now have put in library facilities online, so you can do

your order and your books online, you can actually download talking books online.

So that is essential for everybody and particularly young people. It gives them

access to library facilities. As I said our village is regenerating slowly. And we’ve

got quite a few young people in the village now. For their educational needs for

school needs they need to go onto the internet so if we’ve got good connections

that will take a lot of the travelling that parents have to do.

Q6. INTERVIEWER: Yes that’s true, that’s very true. And then, can you remember

how you first heard about BroadbandCumbria.com the website, how you first

became aware of it? I know it’s a while ago.

INTERVIEWEE: It was at the Great Asby meeting.

INTERVIEWER: It wasn’t ready then though.

INTERVIEWEE: No, but it was mentioned that it was going to be started.

INTERVIEWER: When it was actually launched then how did you know that it

was there, that you could go to it.

INTERVIEWEE: Can’t remember!

INTERVIEWER: You can’t remember?! Oh, that’s very interesting!

INTERVIEWEE: Such a long time ago..

INTERVIEWER: So you don’t know what..

INTERVIEWEE: No..

INTERVIEWER: So it wasn’t through Twitter maybe or through an e-mail.. or

face to face..

INTERVIEWEE: I think it was from an e-mail. Rory Stewart (MP) was

instrumental in setting it up.. I think at the.. I think one of his assistants at that

particular meeting circulated an e-mail to all the people who attended..

INTERVIEWER: ..been at the meeting?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah..

INTERVIEWER: To let them know..

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah.. and I think that’s when I joined ..I’m pretty certain

that’s when it was.

Q7. INTERVIEWER: And then, what do you imagine the aims or the motivations of

the people that have used the site over the past year have been. What do you think

has motivated people?

MEMO 2

INTERVIEWEE: What, to stay with it?

INTERVIEWER: The people that have been active on it and used it.



INTERVIEWEE: I would think much the same as mine. That they want to see

improved broadband. We are way behind the rest of the UK. And it is not

commercially viable for telecommunications companies to provide the service

themselves, we’ve got to look to Government grants so they’ve got to be pushing

government to give us this money to do it. It’s a huge county, very widespread

county is Cumbria but very more.. small population, there’s more sheep than there

are people. It just isn’t economically viable. We’d be last in the queue, to get... yes,

so. The people who are pursuing this via BroadbandCumbria I assume they are the

same as me. They push me because they don’t want to be left behind.

Q8. INTERVIEWER: And do you feel you’ve learned about rural broadband and

the related issues from other people on the website?

INTERVIEWEE: Not a lot.

INTERVIEWER: Not very much?

INTERVIEWEE: No. No I don’t, no that’s why I dropped out I didn’t feel I was

gaining anything by pursuing that. I was getting a lot of contact via Twitter and I

stopped following them on Twitter. It wasn’t telling me anything.

INTERVIEWER: OK, so it wasn’t giving you ..you weren’t learning from it..

INTERVIEWEE: No, no. In our village there was two or three of us kept each

other informed as they’ve heard about things. And the general feeling has been that

BroadbandCumbria and all the committees and groups that have been set are not

achieving anything and we’re better do it on our own.

Q9. INTERVIEWER: Oh, OK, that’s interesting. I mean, did you feel that you had

anything to contribute to the other members of the website.. did you feel..

INTERVIEWEE: No.. no.. I was on a learning curve.

INTERVIEWER: So, right, so you were..

INTERVIEWEE: I got nothing to offer. I was there to learn. I’ve got nothing to

give.

Q10. INTERVIEWER: And then, did you feel that using the website had an impact in

your involvement?

INTERVIEWEE: No.

INTERVIEWER: So neither negatively, or positively. So you would have done

what you’ve done regardless of the use of website?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, definitely.

INTERVIEWER: So no direct impact?

INTERVIEWEE: No.

Q11. INTERVIEWER: And in your view, has that community website enhanced

and/or impeded the campaign for rural broadband?



INTERVIEWEE: I presume it’s enhanced it, I can’t see it’s impeded it at all.

INTERVIEWER: Right, yes.

INTERVIEWEE: It could only have enhanced it because there must have been

people who have gained benefited from it and who have actually got ideas from it to

pursue themselves. I can’t see it’s impeded anything.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, OK. So general positive.. but just not personally...

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. From my point of view it might have enhanced it in as

much as that I didn’t think it was worthwhile, so it encouraged me to go off on

another tack.

INTERVIEWER: It was a catalyst in a way..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.

Q12. INTERVIEWER: And with hindsight, how do you think or do you think that

online social media like Broadband Cumbria with a forum and blog and the people

being able to join it and connect with each other. How could it have been more

effectively used do you think?

INTERVIEWEE: I don’t know because I didn’t follow it for long enough. I think

it’s effective.. any forum is effective that it expresses people’s points of view as long

as those points of view are pushed elsewhere not just bandied about amongst

themselves.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s.. would you say ..and not without wanting to put words

in your mouth.. but it’s the transforming the spoken words to action is where you

see the issue.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: So the forum is given to promote discussion..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: To get a follow up action you have to do that offline, is really

what you’re saying..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, I think so. I mean it’s good in as much as I mean, I think

e-petitions are good.

INTERVIEWER: Oh yes..

INTERVIEWEE: Because it gives.. it expresses a percentage view of certain

items. I think broadband is an issue that if on the forum there’s enough said about

it, and that is taken further to where it can be more effectively used..

INTERVIEWER: Leveraged?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, used as a lever, yes. But if it’s just broadband

discussion for the sake of broadband discussion, it’s not going to achieve anything.



Q13. INTERVIEWER: Right. And then, is there anything you would like to add. I

mean, I know I’ve asked you some specific questions but you.. I would be really be

interested in anything you would like to add to the whole kind of..

INTERVIEWEE: What, broadband issue or social..

INTERVIEWER: All of it!

INTERVIEWEE: I like social media. I think it’s horses for courses. I think

you’ve got to pick and choose what suits yourself. Not all social media suits

everybody. Facebook does not suit me, but all my family are on Facebook – they

seem to live on it. I think it encourages understanding amongst people. I like social

media. But as I said it’s horses for courses. And broadband.. I think it’s.. in this

area, we’ve got the money they’ve got all this money from the government and it’s

sitting there, nothing seem to be happening about it. The Councils don’t seem to be

taking any action about it, they do a lot of talking about it. And I think it’s now down

to the villages to do something themselves. And as they progress I think they’ll see

the benefits that one village is getting. It could be snowball effect, the domino effect

that will fall onto the others. Already I am in contact with some guys in Millburn, in

the next village along, or couple of villages along. And they too are looking at

NextGenUs. I want the NextGenUs to get a hold.. and they are offering us

minimum of 20 megabyte.. megabit download...up to seventy.. Well, that’s

phenomenal and if people could see that we’ve achieved that..

INTERVIEWER: You need someone to take that first leap.. that’s what you are

saying..

INTERVIEWEE: Yes.. exactly. DM is going to be a guinea pig and he is going

to have it within.. before Christmas I would think. And also the guy I’m talking to

down at Millburn, he is fellow director with Heart of Eden Development Trust, the

school is going to go as a guinea pig in Millburn.


INTERVIEWEE: We are promoting broadband through our website.

INTERVIEWER: The Dufton website?

INTERVIEWEE: Dufton has got a website. It doesn’t particularly promote

broadband there.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, so which website?

INTERVIEWEE: Heart of Eden website.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, the Heart of Eden Development Trust website.

INTERVIEWEE: Yep.

INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you very much.

INTERVIEWEE: You’re welcome.



INTERVIEW 4

MEMO 4 and MEMO 7

Q1. INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your interest in the Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE: In the broadband aspect or generically?

INTERVIEWER: Generically.

INTERVIEWEE: I’m primarily a newcomer after only six years. My interest is

growing because I find it a quite unique place to live. For certain it’s influenced by

Cumbrians funnily enough. The number of people I know who are not Cumbrians

outweighs the Cumbrians by about 2:3. And that’s because there are so many

retired people and I am retired. So therefore I mix with retired people. Yeah, I am

interested, I deal a lot in social stuff such as U3A. I know that you are not familiar

with that, but it’s a nationwide organisation for retired..

INTERVIEWER: University of the Third Age?

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. I’m in that and I look after their website. I get involved

with setting forums up for them. Trying to encourage the older generation generally

to actually think about what else there is besides their tea shops and.. you know,

there’s more in life if you just get on t’internet, as it were..

Q2. INTERVIEWER: I agree with you. So what do you see as the strengths and

the weaknesses of the rural community?

INTERVIEWEE: I can’t find any weaknesses actually, I have not got a problem

with anything around here because I am mobile. And I am fit, we are fit. We have

got a great life here, we have a car, we have enough money. The major weakness

is for young people in my opinion. Do you want to know about that?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: I mean that is the major weakness and that’s where we are

now directing attention a bit more. I’m trying to lead back your.. what’s the word..

give back into that. Because I feel, my generation is the golden generation, it is the

one that has had everything. We haven’t had any wars that we had to fight. Well,

my parents, my father did. And I do feel quite strongly about the way we are

moving into isolation within the rural areas. For young people you know, having

said that I know the internet is a wonderful thing, but.. and.. I think there is more

than that that’s needed.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s needs to be in conjunction with other things.

INTERVIEWEE: In conjunction.. it’s a means of communication only, not a

means of entertainment and it’s got to be something else they can do besides that.



Q3. INTERVIEWER: And for you personally, what do you think the main

advantage of access to the internet is?

INTERVIEWEE: Main advantage is.. well that’s a hard one, because there are

just so many that I found anyway. I use it for literally everything.. the dictionary.. I

use it for ..If I’m not sure of something, find the information primarily, that’s the

obvious reason for use of it. And that applies to literally maps, which I used today.

I used e-mail, major. I get about ten or twenty e-mails a day sometimes. Because

of my.. I’m also the chairman of the broadband group Eden Valley Digital, so I have

to keep.. I get a fair few from the likes of BD UK, the County Council themselves,

you know. Very involved in that.

INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. OK.

INTERVIEWEE: E-mail - to answer your question first is main priority, but then

it comes to information

INTERVIEWER: After that.

INTERVIEWEE: After that.

Q4. INTERVIEWER: And then, how would you describe your use of online social

media?

INTERVIEWEE: I’m a sort of hot and cold man. I was very involved when i

was paragliding because I needed it. Because you.. we used to log on the forum:

where is the best flight today. I don’t use it so much now, but I use it for.. I’m trying

to develop it for the U3A primarily.. it’s not going brilliantly, It’s hard work. People

are terrified of it, they think their pension is going to disappear out of their bank

account if they log onto the internet. There are really serious problems on that. So

at the moment that’s a cold.. I’m in the cold area.. I’ve been hot.. I also use it for BC

quite a bit in the beginning, a year ago because I know nothing, I knew no-one.

And I wanted to find out as much as I could and it was marvellous. So I’d use it a

lot but I wouldn’t blog a lot because I didn’t.. in fact I never had on that one.. there

are a few fruit cakes on it. Didn’t say that!

Q5. INTERVIEWER: Erase! How do you imagine improved broadband access

might change the future for rural communities?

INTERVIEWEE: It’s a good question. I think the main point will be – it means

we won’t slip behind the rest of the country. I think that is the simplest way of

putting it. If we don’t have it we’ll become even more isolated. It’s them out there in

the urban areas. We’ll have too much of an advantage, in my opinion. Kids won’t

be able to do their homework as well, which is where I was coming from. The

young people need it I think today. If you have not got it today as a young person,

you have got.. it’s like having.. it’s like having electricity and light – I think it’s vital.



Q6. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. And then casting your mind back, how did you first

hear about BC.com the website?

INTERVIEWEE: Through primarily the interest I was in. It’s a good question

cause I can’t answer it.. It just.. I just knew it was there because I got involved with

broadband Eden Valley, we now call Eden Valley Digital, we formed a group from

that. Louis Mosley mainly I think informed me but I can’t remember..

INTERVIEWER: Exactly!

INTERVIEWEE: That’s more or less the way.. it just.. it was yes it came out..

what’s the word.. It’s yeah, you just you it was there and you just got on with it..

INTERVIEWER: You found it.. something pointed you in that direction..

INTERVIEWEE: Something probably pointed me yeah.. probably Louis

(Molsey).

Q7. INTERVIEWER: And then, looking at.. what do you imagine the aims or

motivations of the people who have been regularly using the site over a period of

time are?

INTERVIEWEE: In the main, it’s well meant and obviously to develop a

broadband service, a better broadband service oddly enough using broadband.

Absolutely, it is a strange situation. But I’ve got good broadband so I’ve made no

problems over it In fact the only reason why I’m interested it’s not for me.. It’s just

not my.. I don’t have a problem.. but there are a lot of people who do have a

problem and that is the main aim because a year ago I...

MEMO 7

INTERVIEWEE: continued:.. were actually.. it was worse here BT have been

around because, especially at our house, they’ve definitely upped my speed by a

factor of 2, absolutely no doubt about it. Once they got to know I was Broadband

Champion.. our broadband.. and I found that common of all Broadband Champions

they’ve said, it goes up. They’ve been fiddling around to get things better. And

that’s great. Yep, I actually doubled the speed overnight.

INTERVIEWER: And your neighbours the same, or?

INTERVIEWEE: No.

INTERVIEWER: Just you?

INTERVIEWEE: I would say.. no there is nobody actually said to me ‘Hey it’s

been better!’ but I imagine that people have it actually improved.. it wouldn’t be just

me.. but they did a lot of work in the road in February last.. this year .. yeah,

definitely.. once they got the word they were into this business thing, they were

trying to get things better.. the question of how it is..

INTERVIEWER: Very interesting..



INTERVIEWEE: That was..

INTERVIEWER: That’d be aims or motivations of people of using the site..

INTERVIEWEE: Primarily to get better broadband. I have to say, there is a

group I could .. you can count them on one hand, maybe two, who do it.. simply to

unload themselves, to unburden themselves or to make themselves even grander..

or whatever, be grandised.. I mean the grandstand..

INTERVIEWER: So..it’s a soapbox..

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah, soapbox, good point. Good way of thinking yeah, I just

get tired, and they actually put me off using it.

Q8. INTERVIEWER: Culture, good idea. What do you feel that you learned about

rural broadband and the related issues from other members of the website?

INTERVIEWEE: Huge amount! You know, whilst I criticised those ..just

criticised those ..the soapbox, they’ve been hugely informative in their own way.

You know, when you start to.. whatever they you divide by two, it actually is a useful

piece of information. As long as you don’t take it too seriously. And the main thing

I’ve learned is funnily enough what’s gone before, you know. Cause I’m new to the

area and I am new to the fact that broadband is poor, I mean it generally isn’t good

anywhere in the country but that’s been a good useful tool as to say ‘We’ve been

here before Access to Cumbria 1998, what a mess that was. Must make sure that

not happen again. Let’s not set the bar too low.’ And it’s been a great way of

putting the aspirations and.. and I have to say BF and people like BF been fantastic

in actually explaining that.. and JC is another guy actually, they given us a lot of

information to explain what we might need in the future. So it’s been good from the

past and it’s good to say these guys know what’s coming in the future, which wasn’t

obvious to me at first. So I’ve got a lot from the past, and getting a lot out of it in the

future.

Q9. INTERVIEWER: That’s very good. Then, in what ways do you feel you’ve

contributed to other members?

INTERVIEWEE: I’ve been in the background on the BroadbandCumbria forum

by being the guy who pulls things together for meetings and so on. Those that are

related to Eden Valley Digital, what we set out last November, this time last year.

We set up with three-four of us, in a pub with Louis Mosley in Appleby and it was

obvious that we all had passionate interest.. but not personal interest, it was

actually for communities. So as in that case you know why won’t we just make all

one, lets form a forum. And that has been our.. the major thing that we’ve done. I

found that really great in that no-one is trying to do their best for the village in

isolation.. we all grouped and realised that power is in the formation of



communication. Communication between each other and then working together

entirely.


INTERVIEWEE: That was encouraged actually, obviously, by Rory Stewart

(MP). And we got lots of different areas coming into this forum. Our little forum

lead to the bigger forum – the East Cumbria, we were the first as a forum! And

then..

INTERVIEWER: So Eden Valley Digital first and then that lead to ECCBF.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. I wouldn’t say we founded the East Cumbria

Community Broadband Forum, we didn’t found that. It was cleverer guys than us.

MM had a big hand in that, who actually was already going with his own network

anyway as you probably already know at Great Asby.

Q10. INTERVIEWER: Then, do you feel that online social media has impacted your

involvement in campaign for broadband?

INTERVIEWEE: Not in terms of the Broadband Cumbria Forum, no. Because

as I said earlier, I am in the background, I just use it for my information because I

can’t contribute to it. At first I couldn’t but I could.. I am going.. I am thinking of

going back to it, because I got so much experience now, I’ve been dealing face to

face with Open Reach, face to face with Cable & Wireless, face to face with all the

different suppliers. And I’ve been heavily involved with BD UK and heavily involved

with County Council. And all of them are brilliant in many ways for each of their

own strengths. We won’t go on telling you too much about Open Reach. But that

had been a fantastic experience and I could pass that on nicely to others and I am

thinking now.. well we are thinking all of us, we’re all saying well we got all this

information we probably are the best people in the country.. in Cumbria anyway, I

wouldn’t say the country cause there are some pretty genned people. I’ve looked

around, there’s quite.. I’ve looked at other social networks and they are very good

actually.. Cheshire is one, and there few others. So I don’t think we’ve got a total..

We are not the only ones .. So yeah..

INTERVIEWER: So, you now feel that you’ve moved into a position where you

now can give back into.. yes.. you started by learning from it and now you’ve moved

on and now you can give back.. That’s fantastic..

INTERVIEWEE: But to be honest with you that’s only come out since this

week, because we’re starting to close in now I’m getting the deal done. There is

enough to do at that along. But once you feel that you’ve got something, then you

could start saying hey we have achieved something, how did we do this? And we

are actually keeping an eye on it.. we’re keeping a log of how we did it.



INTERVIEWER: Like a diary?

INTERVIEWEE: Sort of diary, and with steps, you know milestones we’ve

reached. And the next milestone, I’m trying to push that into a slot. You have to..

This has been without question or a doubt the best thing for me because I retired in

March and it’s as though I haven’t stopped work, actually this has just carried on.

Probably on some weeks I might do twenty-thirty hours on this stuff. And I enjoy it.

There’s been a few ups and downs obviously and .. that’s life.. but yes, that’s been

worth it.

INTERVIEWER: That’s fantastic.

MEMO 6

INTERVIEWEE: continued:

Q11. INTERVIEWER: Sounds really good. So has the Broadband Cumbria website

in your view enhanced or impeded the campaign for..

INTERVIEWEE: It’s enhanced, without a question.. We as I said, I got a lot

from it at the beginning.. I don’t use it at all at the moment, but I’m thinking now I

should start to feed back into it.. but I’m in a .. once I get into a position of being of

value shall we say.. I feel I am of value, but I don’t want to start.. I haven’t achieved

anything...when I get something under my belt


INTERVIEWEE: When I get to a certain point..

Q12. INTERVIEWER: So, in hindsight do you think that online social media, the

website, the forums, the blog.. do you think it could have been used more

effectively?

INTERVIEWEE: I do actually..

INTERVIEWER: What would you suggest if you could go back..

INTERVIEWEE: If I could go back, I’d just make it simpler. I think it’s trying to

do too many things at once. I mean, I am not criticising it at all because I wouldn’t

know how to make it better right now, quite honestly. All I could say is that it’s done

the job and that’s been very good. But I lost interest in it for two reasons: one – I

was just too busy doing all the other stuff. Once you get involved you’ve got a full

time job just communicating with everybody else. And we have our own forum as

such, we use the Yahoo and Reflector which all of guys at.. in EVD are logged on

to, so we’ve got constant communication that’s easy and it’s a forum of our own in

effect. And we have had to work in isolation we haven’t had enough time to looked

at everybody else, apart from the other four pilots, though not much with LB mainly

with JC, CW, way out yonder, and MM. So four of us are being in tight



communication, which is great. You know, it’s been really good the last few six

months. And that’s been very helpful. So we’ve got another forum anyway. Now

coming back to the actual broadband forum, the Cumbria Broadband forum – it’s

been good. I wouldn’t knock it. But a little complicated, one of the reasons I say

was got enough to do ourselves, second one was: I started to lose my way in it. I

found I couldn’t find my last blogs. I still can’t, I looked this morning. What’s

happened to me? You know, I remember saying something at some point or other.

I find it difficult to navigate it now, I don’t know why, but there it is. Yeah.

Q13. INTERVIEWER: Ok, that’s interesting. And then, just is there anything else

you would like to add. You know, it sounds as if you had an incredible journey,

anything you would like to add to the..

INTERVIEWEE: Well, for one would I start the journey again? Yes, it was

been good fun. Looking back – would we do it any differently? Yes, there is lots of

ways we should have been doing it but you learn from hindsight. Going forward?

Sorry, repeat the question again?

INTERVIEWER: I just.. was there anything else you wanted to add?

INTERVIEWEE: To be honest no, I think.. I wish I could. I haven’t thought it

through.. cause I would like to improve it cause it was hard work.. very frustrating.

And I don’t think it applies to the broadband.. It applies to BD UK’s way and County

Council’s way of dealing with us.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: Absolutely chaotic way of dealing with us. So that ??? to do

with broadband.

INTERVIEW 5

MEMO 19

Q1. INTERVIEWER: So, how would you describe your interest in the Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE 1: We live here, obviously. Very much involved in quite a few

things that’s happening in the Eden Valley. Love it as a place, well I do anyway.

It’s got a lot to offer but it’s got distinct downsides as well to it.

Q2. INTERVIEWER: So in general, what do you see as strengths and the

weaknesses of rural community as based on your experience here?

INTERVIEWEE 1: I think the strengths of them is that they .. it’s an area in

which you feel safe, it’s the people that are very dependable. They are friendly to a

certain extent. They.. I think they will accept you to a certain extent but you can live

here for sort of ten years and you don’t feel you’ve moved on any further.

INTERVIEWEE 2 But unless you are a farmer, your networks aren’t principally

within the community, they have to be wider, because their networks are based on



interest, in my case. In singing.. or are involved in rural arts.. that they.. most of

your activities have to be out with the village rather than inside it because there

aren’t that many people with the same set of shared interest in maybe our shared

interest or other people’s.

INTERVIEWEE 1: And certainly an area like Cumbria which has a very small

population, you have got to travel a long way to find people with similar sort of

interest to you. And you won’t necessarily find people at the.. people that you know

shared interest at the same event, because they‘ve got to travel such a long

distance to get there, yeah. So yeah, that can be frustrating. So yes, there are

frustrations with it.

INTERVIEWER: And then, in terms of the actual, the way the communities are

evolving here, what do you see the issues are around the..

INTERVIEWEE 1: I think you’ve got the.. you’ve got a.. When we first moved

here it was a very static community, there hadn’t been a lot of movement. The

gradually.. the older members of the community are dying off. They’re often.. they

are the people who have been here for donkey’s years. You get people coming in

who.. it’s nice in a way because the most recent people that have come in have

been the new families. But there is always this worry that the people who come in

are coming as second home owners. We’ve got about a third of the village now

who are second home owners. And with a very few exceptions we don’t see them

really off.. giving the village anything. You know, they are probably going to bring

their own food in. They are not actually doing much financially for the village. They

are also not holiday cottages. These are houses that are empty for most of the

year. You know, some of them I don’t see any people at them. You know, it’s that..

that underused really. You don’t feel they got any friends.. friends or family that

they can give the..

INTERVIEWEE 2: But the ones who are here, I mean the farmers for instance, I

mean they have.. and this is still in our case a working village with a lot of farms.

Their life means getting up very early, getting to bed very early.. so even their

activity patterns are different from others. And we don’t have our own

communications within the village particularly. We have notice boards but because

most people have to get in to cars to get anywhere in the area, most people don’t

see what’s on the notice boards. So information tends to spread very slowly

through the village by word of mouth.

INTERVIEWEE 1: ..and that can lead to all sorts of things..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Can lead to problems. But it means in many cases that

people assume that you know.. I mean it happened very recently, that our nextdoor



neighbour died. Everybody assumed we knew, but it was actually three days

before we learned that our neighbour had died. Because it just didn’t come up.

And that can happen in the village, people who are in the know on something,

assume everybody knows but they don’t actually tell anybody.

INTERVIEWEE 1: I mean certainly.. you know.. in this village you’ve got very

distinct two parts village. You’ve got the bottom half, the old bit, which is a lot of

holiday cottages and older people.. and then top half..

INTERVIEWEE 2: ..and us.

INTERVIEWEE 1: And us. Yes. Then the top part of the village, where you’ve

got most of the new people are coming in. And there is a real.. you getting.. you

sense there is a real community up there and people are talking to each other, and

they know everybody, and I think this end of the village is quite different. And that I

think has changed over the last few years. Cause that just happens to be where

most of the houses that people are going to live in are..

INTERVIEWER: Yes.. (indistinct)

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yes, this end, is more the people.. it’s a lot of smaller houses

that are going as second homes, or people living here on their own. There’s a lot of

people living on their own down this end. And again, they tend to be people who

aren’t necessarily getting themselves involved in things.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Their networks presumably are ones from elsewhere but

certainly within ours, you know we’re talking about people who we know through

our shall we say cultural activities, or through INTERVIEWEE 1’s teaching still.. who

may well live eighty miles away from us. You know, the distances are huge and

because there is no transport networks they are not people who you are likely to

see very often other than at those formal events because of the problems of getting

around in the county. So, the networks you have are almost virtual networks,

almost virtual social networks people you see for a few hours or whatever each

week and that’s it.

INTERVIEWEE 1: I think also you need to be fairly self-sufficient if you’re living

in a very rural community. You have got to be quite happy with your own company.

You know, and if you’re not you could become very lonely and very frustrated and it

is a problem. And I am sure there are a lot of people sitting in houses quite

depressed, because there isn’t this.. People are not going to each other’s houses..

Whether that’s as INTERVIEWEE 2 said the farming thing, they go to bed at eight

o’clock, so there is no time to socialise in the evening. They probably stop, have a

drink at the pub and then go to bed. And I think even with.. that set the pattern for



the village.. I think even with the people who aren’t in the farming community that

has become the way things are done, so people don’t socialise at night.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Quite literally, there is no-one’s house in this village that we

go into other than to.. I mean walk dogs regularly with people, whatever.. speak,

see people regularly at the village hall committee meetings.. and so on, but you

don’t go into each other’s houses. It’s totally different from the sort of urban life that

we have lived.

INTERVIEWEE 1: And I think you find that it’s not just us would say this..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Oh no, quite everyone would say that..

INTERVIEWEE 1: ..other people who have come in from urban set up

particularly would say the same, they’d say that is the one thing they miss. It’s the

lack of access to people’s homes.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Popping in..

INTERVIEWEE 1: You know, popping in, that sort of thing. You know, we keep

our doors open, which is great, but it’s not keeping your doors open because

people are coming in, you know, you keep your doors open because it’s safe.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Anyway.

Q3. INTERVIEWER: So, the next thing I’d like to talk about is what you think the

main advantages to access to the internet is for you personally.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Buying things, because we don’t have access to shops

easily. This village is full of delivery vans from Monday through to Friday as

everybody orders online, whether from the supermarket or whether, you know

whether it’d be the new Belfast sink we just bought..whatever it might be.

INTERVIEWEE 1: He did say I was keeping one of the delivery vans.. van

drivers in work..

INTERVIEWEE 2: One..

MEMO 20

INTERVIEWEE 2: continued: ..no I didn’t say, they said.. we were..we actually

joke

INTERVIEWEE 1: Cause it is..if you are doing any major work or you’re wanting

to.. like..you know.. we’re fitting out a kitchen there’s obviously a lot of stuff that has

to be ordered..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Teaching material for you..

INTERVIEWEE 1: and it is easy.. it is easily ordered online. Yes, I mean I use it

teaching. Obviously, running a B&B business it’s vital, you know that side of it.

INTERVIEWER: You look around the website.



INTERVIEWEE 1: Yeah, so.. you know and a lot of our bookings are done

online.. so..

INTERVIEWEE 2: We have a shared website, we don’t actually have our own

website.. but we did at one point set one up..

INTERVIEWEE 1: So yeah, so yes, I mean, I’m using it daily. And also, you

know, just accessing information. My daughter is moving to Cambridge, I’m sort of

looking around for flats and things.

INTERVIEWEE 2: We use Skype to ring relatives overseas. We use it quite a

lot..for research, or whatever it might be. So there’s.. we make a great deal of use

of the computer. It’s not the broadband, it’s not essential in sense that the speed of

it is less important for us. But we will use it.. we are not techies but we understand

how computers work, and we can try and use i-Player depending on availability and

the rest of it.. that I will catch up on radio programmes on the website so and so..

We will use it for functions, but it actually is not a particularly big feature of using of

running our B&B.

INTERVIEWEE 1: I’m not scared of it anymore, which is something you know.. I

used , I thought I’d blow up the computer but it’s ..I think it actually become more au

fait that it’s a..

INTERVIEWEE 2: (indistinct)

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yeah, it’s.. I use it more.

Q4. INTERVIEWER: Fantastic. And then, would.. how would you describe your

use of online social media, do you use social media at all?

INTERVIEWEE 2: No.. no.

INTERVIEWER: Not really?

INTERVIEWEE 2: No, absolute..

INTERVIEWER: You don’t join any forums to debate things, or..

INTERVIEWEE 2: No, we’re not on Facebook, we don’t Tweet.

INTERVIEWER: Don’t write blogs, comments..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Don’t write blogs.. Don’t see any need for that..

INTERVIEWEE 1: I may have sort of.. you know forwarding funny e-mails to

people, but that’s about it, you now.. it’s.. yeah.. that’s the only thing.

Q5. INTERVIEWER: And then, how do you imagine that improved broadband

might change the future for rural community?

INTERVIEWEE 2: Depends.. I mean for most people it’s just simple speed. In

other words if you’re not using the service you don’t want it to fall.. the thing to go

down after ten minutes of watching an hour’s programme. The right .. for a lot of

people just a more reliable service will help and I’m sure..a lot of.. I know that lots of



people in this village have got broadband but it will only be a minority for the .. they

need to use it for conferencing calls and, you know, using it for their business, I

mean, clearly rural areas become more attractive to people who run a business if

they’ve got good broadband.. that must be an issue.

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yes, that is an issue, that would actually.. you know, in terms

of buying a house in Dufton, especially if you want to run a business from that

house I think the speed of broadband currently would be a..

INTERVIEWER: ..barrier?

INTERVIEWEE 1: Barrier. I also think that..

INTERVIEWEE 2: So it affects all of us if we are going to sell a house.

INTERVIEWEE 1: And I think the missing link thing in a way, we know there’s

lots of people out there who probably have similar values, and similar thoughts, and

similar interests but because of the spread of people an efficient broadband system

possibly would give them.. would create that opportunity for forums.. which is

frustrating at the moment..

INTERVIEWER: A bit more of a community of interests.. on the internet..

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yeah.. but I think the missing link is almost right.. we’ve got a

good broadband network, we can set this up. Maybe , I think the people are

frustrated with the broadband speed and so they probably don’t.. ‘Oh, it’s hopeless,

this, we’re not going to bother’. Whereas if this was an efficient system, maybe

something would get.. and that would improve the whole networking setup.

INTERVIEWEE 2: But it remains the issue that even though we may well know

lots of people through.. in our different personal worlds.. we don’t necessarily know

their e-mail addresses, we don’t know.. we got no.. unless we individually ask

everybody, we can’t look someone’s e-mail address up.

INTERVIEWER: So it’s still a kind of one-to-one communication rather than

going to a virtual kind of..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Yeah, it becomes a real problem, because there isn’t an

alternative means of communication. If you live in the city you may well see people

quite regularly or they’ll read the same media and so on. Here in a big.. in a big

geographically big rural area you .. unless you see them at specific event you won’t

bump into them, they won’t read the same media, you can’t communicate with them

in a way that you could.. If we are putting on a cultural event whereas in the city you

can rely on lots of people reading the paper..

INTERVIEWER: That reaches a long a way

INTERVIEWEE 2: It’s not the same here, it really isn’t. People would be in

different areas for TV, let alone different areas for radio, let alone for newspapers



and so on. So, you.. communications are much harder, but it’s not easy to find way

to contact you those people you suddenly need to using e-mails.

Q6. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I understand. And then, have .. just have you ever

heard before our conversation of the BroadbandCumbria.com website? You had

heard of it?

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yeah.

INTERVIEWEE 2: I hadn’t.

INTERVIEWEE 1: Oh yeah. Yes I knew it was out there. And.. But you know,

that’s about as far as it’s gone, I haven’t looked at it.

INTERVIEWEE 2: We knew there were discussions about broadband in

Cumbria and about improving access. I didn’t know there was a specific website to

that in fact.

Q11. INTERVIEWER: And.. some of these other questions are less relevant. Just

to say your perception of the community website to promote broadband. Do you

perceive it as of having an effect on .. and what’s happened.. what’s happening?

INTERVIEWEE 1: Difficult to say really, if I haven’t used it. I mean, I would have

thought it principle it should be as long as people know it’s out there and are using

it.

INTERVIEWER: So you haven’t had anything kind of rippled down, I mean..

INTERVIEWEE 1: No..

INTERVIEWER: Did you know you’ve got Broadband Champion in the village?

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE 2: But only recently.. only a matter of days ago we heard about

it..

INTERVIEWEE 1: I’ve known for a while..

INTERVIEWEE 2: I haven’t.

INTERVIEWEE 1: Because I’m obviously on the village hall committee and it’s

been mentioned there. There was a stage when the village hall was going to be

hosting the experimental mast, you know, the trial mast..

INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.

INTERVIEWEE 1: And then they decided not to do that, and it was going up to a

farm locally. So yes, I knew through that discussions in the village hall..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Yeah, but do you.. no, the question is about the Champion..

INTERVIEWEE 1: I knew that, yes I did..

INTERVIEWEE 2: I didn’t know.. I knew DM was interested. No one has ever

used the word to me ‘Champion’.

INTERVIEWER: Broadband Champion..



INTERVIEWEE 2: There was a guy in the village who was more interested

because he was trying to run a business, I knew.. but I’d never heard the term

Champion. Broadband Champion.

INTERVIEWEE 1: No, I knew there was Broadband Champion here.

INTERVIEWER: And had you been surveyed by the..?

INTERVIEWEE 1: No.

INTERVIEWER: Not taken part in that..?

INTERVIEWEE 1: No, no. That is the strange thing. You know, we know we

got a Broadband Champion, we know we’ve got this company who are bringing

broadband to the village. But the initial plan was that there was going to be a

meeting, the Broadband Champion was going to set up a meeting and talk to the

village about it and then things sort of moved on. And I think the company who first

said they were going to come in and monitor interest have decided to come in

anyway, so we’ve sort of almost got past the point..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Now that’s INTERVIEWEE 1’s view, it’s not mine..

INTERVIEWER: What’s your view?

INTERVIEWEE 2: Well, in a sense that I don’t know all those things that

INTERVIEWEE 1’s..

MEMO 21

INTERVIEWEE 2: continued: talking about. No-one’s ever told me.

INTERVIEWEE …maybe on a village hall committee, but I don’t know that the

company’s coming in, I don’t who the company are. I’ve heard recently about the

mast but thats all I know.. maybe in a meeting planned but I’ve not heard of a

meeting.

INTERVIEWEE 1: No, but that is the frustration because I think that was what

was planned. And it has not happened, so in a way nobody really knows what’s

going on because there’s been no let around.. it’s all sort of.. it’s almost it’s.. the

village doesn’t take the initiatives anymore, it’s the company that’s taking the

initiatives.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Or some people in the village maybe..

INTERVIEWEE 1: No, I think it’s the company that have sort of said.. ‘Right, we

are not surveying to see if this is going to happen .. This is what’s going to happen

and people will buy into it.’ And I think that is going to be a problem because

obviously people don’t actually know what they are buying into cause they’ve not

had any..

INTERVIEWER: Got no ownership….

INTERVIEWEE 1: They’ve not had any chance to..



INTERVIEWEE 2: But we’re only told .. INTERVIEWEE 1’s only been told this

about the company by other people.. The company hadn’t told us that that’s what

they are doing.. So it’s only word of mouth that says that.. So we don’t know .. all

we’ve heard is that.. or INTERVIEWEE 1’s heard is that this may be happening,

and this is what we think they may be doing but there’s no systematic knowledge.

And such as we know could easily be wrong, cause no-one is really advocating..

INTERVIEWEE 1: But I think that people who seem to know are very much

passing on hearsay. You know, I am not sure that anything.. I don’t get the feeling

that anything in black and white.. and.. or it might be costing this or might be costing

that.. you know, there is nothing..

INTERVIEWER: Concrete?

INTERVIEWEE 1: Concrete.

INTERVIEWEE 2: Or we know how the information gets distorted in the village

anyway, so..

INTERVIEWER: This is symptomatic.

INTERVIEWEE 2: We.. this information is coming second, third, fourth hand

from people, and what surprises us that is that apart from the fact that we know that

anyone who’s got the broadband, which is a lot of people in the village, that anyone

who’s got broadband would like a faster service and more particularly want a more

reliable service. That’s what.. we know that’s what they like. I’ve no idea whether

people are so interested they would change their broadband provider and would go

from their existing system which is BT landline delivered to something else which

should cost a premium on top of what they already paying.

INTERVIEWEE 1: This seems weird, that they actually don’t want to find out if

people are interested before they did it. It seems the wrong way around to me, but

there you go.

INTERVIEWER: And just.. the role of the Parish Councillor in all this? Which

is a..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Allegedly they’re talking about these things but they don’t

communicate, they don’t put a newsletter out, they don’t tell anybody what’s going

on. So they may well have discussed it but..

INTERVIEWEE 1: It doesn’t get passed on..

INTERVIEWEE 2: It doesn’t get..

INTERVIEWEE 1: Occasionally a newsletter appears on the village hall..

INTERVIEWEE 2: I think we’ve had one..

INTERVIEWEE 1: ..on the village notice board.. but it doesn’t.. There is not the

sense in the village that the Parish Council represents the village. I think the Parish



Council is largely irrelevant to most villages. You know, it’s sort of a talking shop for

a few people interested. They have very.. it’s not a very mobile membership, is it?

It seems to go around the village you know, who’s going to be on the Parish Council

this time, you know..

INTERVIEWEE 2: But the Parish Council happens to include a number of the

people who we might say were techies, people who are very much up to speed on

these things, and just as .. clearly making the assumption that everybody has the

same operational knowledge and interest in the computer.. you know, I can think of

a couple of people, one of them is on the Parish Council.. two of them are on the

Parish Council straight away.. who can be on the computer virtually all day, you

know. The computer is their portal into the world.. but they are very unusual. But

they may well be driving forward, but most people.. I mean it’s an older village, so

there are people in the village who don’t even have broadband, or are not

interested. But we’ve talked about it before, we have many other people who dealt

with this sort of technology before they retired, but they got rapidly out of touch with

the way the systems now operate and who therefore just use their computers and

everything for the minimum range of operational requirements. Like we once used

them as word processors.. now we’re using them as word processors and a means

of gaining access to websites and ordering goods of one sort or another. But

beyond that wouldn’t know anything more about it..

Q13. INTERVIEWER: Had to.. move to the next level. So was there anything else

you would like to add to the..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Depends what else you felt came out yesterday that we

haven’t recorded this time..

INTERVIEWEE 1: I mean, I think it’s easy to sound negative..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Oh, we want a good broadband!

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yeah, we want a good broadband system. And I think it’s..

you know, but there are certain issues in Dufton. I don’t know how to.. what extent

that reflects views in other villages. I think there are people in this village who

probably have the same assessment of the situation here as us. I don’t think we

are a lone voice in Dufton, yeah, I think there are other people we talk to who would

say the same sort of thing about the community here.

INTERVIEWEE 2: But village dynamics.. we talked to other people who promote

rural arts in the other villages, and their description of their situation and the

problems and challenges they face are essentially the same as ours.

INTERVIEWEE 1: We had a.. we recently.. it was a village hall thing.. but we

were recently interviewed by a man who was doing a research for the local ..



INTERVIEWEE 2: Heart of Eden..

INTERVIEWEE 1: Heart of Eden organisation.. he was.. you know, when he

was interviewing me he was saying, ‘Oh yes, that’s familiar,. That’s familiar..’ So

the same sort of issues were coming up throughout the Eden Valley really..

INTERVIEWER: Communications..

INTERVIEWEE 1: Yes, the way communities work.. and the communications

and things.. so I think you know, we are not reflecting a totally unusual... set of

circumstances..

INTERVIEWER: Yes..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Purely reliability.. that in the end is what all those people are

interested in. Like having a car that stops every so often, because it stops every

so often because there is no petrol in it, it drives you mad!

INTERVIEWEE 1: If you’ve got the system, you would want it to work, don’t

you!?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, otherwise you can’t depend on it, you can’t rely on it.

INTERVIEWEE 1: It’s frustrating, yeah..

INTERVIEWEE 2: Probably the other thing we would want to stress is the

problem we all have in knowing what the constraints are within the telephony

system, because we don’t know.. BT will not tell us why our broadband service is so

poor.

INTERVIEWEE 1: We had a variety..

INTERVIEWEE 2: The won’t explain..

INTERVIEWEE 1: We had a variety of explanations from BT but it seems to

depend on who you are talking to.

INTERVIEWEE 2: We’ve not had anything systematic... I mean we.. again it’s

filtered through people who know, quotes, ‘What the problem is’.. but.. will it.. is

there a problem in the exchange.. do they need to invest in the exchange to give us

a better broadband service? Is there a problem in the final home loop or whatever,

because of the quality of the cable or what the cable is made out of? How much will

it cost just to..

MEMO 5c

INTERVIEWEE 2: We’ve not had anything systematic... I mean we.. again it’s

filtered through people who know, quotes, ‘What the problem is’.. but.. will it.. is

there a problem in the exchange.. do they need to invest in the exchange to give us

a better broadband service? Is there a problem in the final home loop or whatever,

because of the quality of the cable or what the cable is made out of? How much will

it cost just to bring us optical fibre into the village? Would that overcome all the



constrains? We don’t know. So we don’t.. Most people don’t know quite what to

campaign for, because they don’t know where the bottlenecks are.

INTERVIEWEE 1: Apparently there is a new mast which is supposed to be

picking up on a very good link between Appleby and somewhere else. It’s

supposed to be sort of.. going into that one.. as I understand this..

INTERVIEWER: That’s another issue..

INTERVIEWEE 2: But that’s just anecdotal. We don’t.. the mast may or may not

be a solution.. We don’t know.. because we don’t know enough about it..

INTERVIEW 6

MEMO 26

Q1. INTERVIEWER: So my first question is about the Eden Valley. How would

you describe your relationship to the Eden Valley?

INTERVIEWEE: To a degree, we got where we are because of LB, I mean

obviously you’ve met LB?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: LB came and encouraged us to go to the EC..well, more

often it would be the ECCBF.. we were not able to go to the first meeting we did go

to the second meeting.. and they were in fact fairly open.. I mean quite happy for us

to join.. as I have said to you, a lot of the problems are political, and Eden is the

political problem. Most people would tell you that Cumbria County Council... most

lay people tell you that Cumbria County Council got the procurement because of

Rory Stewart (MP). Because Rory is very good at jumping on the bandwagon

advertising himself and promoting himself and in this.. you know, as a by-product

promoting the thing that he is discussing. I would say that he is completely

mistaken in that because he did jump on the bandwagon. By jumping on the

bandwagon I am sure he has to an extent helped, to a degree he has hindered..

and he has lobbied in the background.. in the initial stages the fact that he created

Rheged, it was followed up at Great Asby, no question, he .. he raised the profile

hugely.. and enthused and activated people in a way that the County Council

wouldn’t have even considered. But he is a new MP and he was wanting to create

his mark and this was a very good thing. And also of course, where he lives which

of course is in the Eden Valley, has no broadband. But that’s fair enough that he’s

gone to the Eden Valley because the last two Penrith and the Borders MPs have

lived up here. Because we are actually still in the Penrith and the Borders.




INTERVIEWEE: Yes, it’s huge! But we have been ignored in terms of.. in so

far as Eden have been preferred and they have.. I mean, they have certainly been

politically preferred by Rory.. they have not been preferred I don’t think by the

County Council.. and they have not been preferred by Mike Kiely (BDUK), because

we have a lot of contact with Mike, quite a lot of contact with Jim Savage..(Cumbria

County Council) and more.. more recently quite a lot of contact with Liz Malinson

who is the portfolio holder at Council. So.. he played a useful role in creating a

BroadbandCumbria website, which again was the means of disseminating

information to a lot of interested people who were further ‘excited’ in the correct

term of ‘excited’ by the experience and anticipation. To a degree it might have

been better from the community’s viewpoint if all of that activity happened in this

twelve months, not in the previous twelve months. But equally, if he hadn’t done it

twelve months ago, I don’t think Cumbria would be where they are now. Although

where they are now is.. yes..

INTERVIEWER: It’s not a straightforward answer.

INTERVIEWEE: No.. Does that help?

Q2. INTERVIEWER: Yes, it helps a lot! Thank you very much. And, in general,

what do you see as the strengths and the weaknesses of the rural community?

INTERVIEWEE: I think the rural community is quite cohesive. Our particular

community, in terms of the broadband, is an amalgamation of seven parishes, two

of which are in Eden District, five of which are in Allerdale. We are in Allerdale

obviously, cause we are in.. you know.. you are literally in the last house in West

Ward here.

INTERVIEWER: Right on the edge

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, the stream at the bottom of the garden..

INTERVIEWER: Is the boundary..?

INTERVIEWEE: Is the boundary, yep. And we already have the Northern

Fells Group which is a charity because they existed before CICs existed. Designed

to help the seven parishes and population of the seven parishes. We are super

sparse so there’s you know.. there are not very many of us. Caldbeck is our largest

centre of population and I think it has about three hundred and something..

INTERVIEWER: That is very small.

INTERVIEWEE: So it is ..you know.. everywhere is small. Or on the edge of

the Lakes... some of our.. bits of our parishes are in the Lake District.. But the..

because the seven parishes identify themselves as working together for the benefit

of each other, I think that has helped in terms of the broadband.. We know each

other quite well, I mean CW comes..



INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.

INTERVIEWEE: Because I was brought up in Carlisle, which makes me


INTERVIEWEE: ..and CW comes from Devon originally, but I mean he’s been

up here forty odd years.. and some of the parish, particularly the parochial sector of

the Parish Council, definitely see us as the usurpers... interlopers, who you know..

who should know our place better.. and that will be true for all seven parishes. One

of the parishes in particular at one point there was an attempt.. apparently an

attempted coup by the incomers which didn’t come off.. But that’s like any family,

you’ve got internal wrangling, and I think that’s quite a good description of it in a

way, we are a bit of a family split up..l. But you are still allowed to fight among

yourselves. However, there have been occasions in terms of the broadband, you

know, even Mike (Kiely) said ‘Well, if we could just do one parish and see how that

went..’ And all seven parishes went ‘Well, no! Cause we are trying to work together,

we want to provide something that is going to better the community, that can

improve what’s already happening through the North Fells.’ Cause we have a mini

bus which you can hire at cost, but you know, not to make a profit..

INTERVIEWER: Not for profit..

INTERVIEWEE: Just to make it run, we have village agents, who are

operating in the area trying to improve the circumstances of the elderly and the

vulnerable, and that’s the mission that we have for the broadband when it is

ubiquitous that it can help people. So, I think.. I think, but because I don’t live in the

urban area it’s hard for me to be sure now.. I think, the fact that we are more rural

than for instance where I was brought up which is a village outside Carlisle.. We

probably do still have more cohesiveness.. than places which had become

dormitory villages with very little farming going on et cetera.. Because where we

might have difficulty influencing some of our community.. Somebody else who is

keen and interested knows how to approach those people. So we are a well

balanced group, I think, with hopefully the appropriate mixture of skills to make use

of the benefits of being a small community and avoid the disp...

INTERVIEWER: The difficulties..?

INTERVIEWEE: The difficulties.. yes.

Q3. INTERVIEWER: So, what do you think the main advantages of access to the

internet are for you personally?

INTERVIEWEE: I just think it is tremendously empowering. I mean that’s it in

a nutshell…



Q4. INTERVIEWER: I totally agree with you. And how would you describe your

own use of online social media?

INTERVIEWEE: Limited. I am the sort of person who thinks it’s really

interesting to receive a round robin Christmas letter in the days before e-mails

existed. But wouldn’t dream of telling everybody what I’d been doing cause I don’t

necessarily want everyone to know. So.. I’m on Friends Re-united and fascinated

reading everybody’s little titbits and irritated at the ones that didn’t.. but don’t do it

myself.

INTERVIEWER: OK. How about things.. How about other websites that .. a

forums and are trying to achieve things.. something ..you know, like Broadband

Cumbria but for different issues.. do you belong to anything like that?

INTERVIEWEE: Again.. well.. all the boring ones like.. you know, 38 degrees

and the Robin Hood Tax..

INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.. OK.. so it’s some of those..

INTERVIEWEE: Those things I do actively.. and repetitively participating.. I

don’t necessarily always.. I mean.. action at 38 degrees is you know.. and I’m also

reasonably voluble in Hope not Hate I think..

INTERVIEWER: Wow!

INTERVIEWEE: .. but only in fact online..

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: ..cause being sufficiently activist to travel down to wherever

take part in things.... so that sort of thing, yeah.. it’s interesting really when you think

of it that way. I do partake in all of those.. Do you want to see our woodpecker? It’s

just on the nuts over there. It’s just turned round, so you wouldn’t be able to see it.

INTERVIEWER: It’s behind them?

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Oh yeah.

INTERVIEWEE: It just flew away.

INTERVIEWER: Has he got a red head?

INTERVIEWEE: Red..

INTERVIEWER: Red .. the red..

INTERVIEWEE: Yeah.. Bits of the of the back.. nape of his neck and

underneath.. sorry..

INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s fine..

INTERVIEWEE: Sorry, we don’t have time to divert.



Q5. INTERVIEWER: It’s one of the wonderful things about being up here. And

then, how would you imagine the improved broadband access might change the

future for the rural community?

INTERVIEWEE: Well, what we would like to do is, as CW says, enable the

elderly and vulnerable to stay at home and watch their favourite television

programme or film over the internet for as long as they possibly can. So, I think it

can be a support structure. I think it can provide a degree of reassurance both to.. I

mean, for instance my mother has just come home from hospital and that.. and she

stayed on her own for the first time when she got carers come in, she’s broken her

back .. Effectively her vertebrae just disintegrated...very osteoporotic. Now, in a

way.. At the age of 87 it’d be hard work for me to persuade her to start getting onto

the internet and log on, but if it was something to which she was accustomed, then

she and I could have had visual contact and chatted. And although we do talk on ..

you know we’re talking on the phone and obviously it’s only half an hour so I would

go across and things.. But I don’t want to be there all the time.. She doesn’t want

me to be there all the time but equally a bit of moral support more frequently would

just..

INTERVIEWER: ..would be nice.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes. And as you know yourself in some ways, whereas a

picture tells a thousand stories, real time video just reassures both of you that this is

not as bad as it looks or it’s blah or it’s whatever..

INTERVIEWER: Sorry..

INTERVIEWEE: So, that I think will be.. could be an advantage. Also,

because we are so rural and very often we have to go to Newcastle for you know..

for meetings.. for interviews, medical side things.. quite a lot of which in the initial

stages could happen ..

INTERVIEWER: ..remotely..?

INTERVIEWEE: Remotely.

INTERVIEWER: To save you travel.

INTERVIEWEE: So you would save quite a lot of travel..

INTERVIEWER: And time..

INTERVIEWEE: And time.. and physical exhaustion when you ... you know,

when you are vulnerable and elderly.. you know and travelling over there .

Obviously if they are testing for what.. then..

INTERVIEWER: You have to go..

INTERVIEWEE: You have to go. But equally in some cases, tests could be

done via the nursing and..



INTERVIEWER: ..and sent..

INTERVIEWEE: And sent, you know. So I think those sort of things.. and

obviously in terms of the young people’s sense of social inclusion.. It’s all very well

these people saying ‘Well, you know, it would enable our young to stay but actually

still it wouldn’t give them the nightclubs to go to...’ Which I try not to mention, but it

might encourage people who are slight.. you know, getting a bit long in the tooth as

they see themselves at 28, you know.. to come back and still feel as though part of

the real world as we tend now to perceive it.. because it has become part of.. you

know, essential life.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

INTERVIEWEE: My nephew has just moved in with his girlfriend.. his pals

were more likely to have posted something on his Facebook page that ..wall, than

send him a card stuck on his real wall to say ‘Happy New House’.

INTERVIEWER: That’s very true.. I do agree with you.

INTERVIEWEE: Yes, so.. you know, all of these things.. And so many more

people can be empowered to do what they want to do. It’s another tool of life.

Q6. INTERVIEWER: And, thinking back, how did you first hear of the

BroadbandCumbria.com website, that it was there, available?

INTERVIEWEE: We knew it was there the first day it was put online.

INTERVIEWER: How did you know?

INTERVIEWEE: I am just trying to decide who it will have been would have

told us. I would think that probably, knowing that it was coming to existence..

Memo 29

INTERVIEWEE ..we must have registered somewhere to get an email to tell

us. But I'm getting old so I can’t be expected to remember that.. (laughter)

INTERVIEWER You heard about it but you can’t quite remember exactly who

told you?

INTERVIEWEE No I can’t...no.

Q7. INTERVIEWER That’s fine, it’s just interesting. I wonder how people find it.

You are not the only person who can’t remember. And looking at the people who

have used the website over the past year, the activity on the site, what do you

imagine their aims and motivations might have been?

INTERVIEWEE I think... a lot of people have been.. initially enthused but then

haven’t known what to do next. I think.. quite a lot of people are kind of expecting

the world to be done to them, rather than to do the world. And.. it’s... you know, the

actual site came online at about the same time as BT Infinity were promoting

themselves, and there was quite a lot of confusion between a lot of people. You



know, you would say, you know, have you joined Broadband Cumbria, are you

interested in it and they would say ‘oh we’ve registered’ and what they mean is that

they had gone onto the BT Infinity site and done that – I’m not aware of anybody

having done the reverse, but it’s possible. And I think to a lot of people that would

have been it. The be all and end all. I haven’t looked recently but if you look at who

was active then, I imagine there were an awful lot of people who signed up and who

have never gone back. I don’t use it anything like as much as I did, and we came to

the conclusion as a group a while ago that one, there wasn’t a lot of point,

exchanges were, are, very active. The website was providing people within the

community..

INTERVIEWER Which website?

INTERVIEWEE North Fells Broadband – that that was, you know, and at the

time we were being a little paranoid and didn’t want Louis (Molsey) to know

everything we were doing.

Q8. INTERVIEWER Fair enough. And what do you feel you learned about rural

broadband and the related issues from the site, if anything?

INTERVIEWEE I learned that some people are quite aggressive online in a

way that they are not at all in person. I learned that a lot of people know an awful

lot more about things that I do. But then again, as I then read round it more, found

out more about it, I realised it’s a bit like when you are overwhelmed in your first

term at university. Somebody says something, then you realise actually they only

know a name.. or if they don’t they say ‘an eminent historian’ and they mean

themselves!

Q9. INTERVIEWER Then looking at it from the other angle, what do you feel that

you contributed to other people on the website?

INTERVIEWEE Very little – it’s a long time since I thought I was going to

make a difference in life.. but you just do what you can. I think I did make a very

positive contribution in the first instance because an awful lot of people found it a lot

too complicated to even sign themselves up, didn’t really understand..

INTERVIEWER Did you write the ‘help’ pages?

INTERVIEWEE Yes.

INTERVIEWER Fantastic.

INTERVIEWEE They are not up-to-date now, but at the time.. it was

apparently useful and they seemed to be pleased so I suppose I did make a minor

contribution. One of the problems was that they worked so hard to make it all

things to all men that it did make it hard.. and actually the micro-sites idea was a



bad idea, because it was so much easier to blog in a ‘group’; groups were much

more useful.

INTERVIEWER Forums?

INTERVIEWEE Yes, forums were much easier to navigate your way around,

and to actually input.

Q10. INTERVIEWER Yes.. yes. And do you feel that using that online social

media, the blog, forums, commenting, and the micro-sites, your use of that, had an

impact on your involvement in the campaign for broadband?

INTERVIEWEE Probably not personally, because I've been doing some

mapping, of which I know nothing. But because of you, which I now realise, and

Mike’s data-book, he’s been harassing me to write a paper on how I did the

mapping and how I map things – how it works. And this is a person who had never

heard of a shape file or a flat file in May. So it did kind of get me in touch with

somebody that I got a little bit of help from. But sadly, when you are completely

ignorant, they kept assuming that you know something that you don’t, so mostly I’ve

made it up as I go along.

I’d say the forums have been sparking points that caused me to go off and look at

other things.

INTERVIEWER Like a catalyst?

INTERVIEWEE Yes. In terms of our computing abilities, Colin does the

hardware and I do the software. Obviously that’s an over-simplification, so he will

go off and investigate white space and all the rest of it, and I'm sitting there saying

‘why does it say minus DBs’ because that means negative noise.

Q11. INTERVIEWER: And then, has the Broadbandcumbria.com community

website, in your view, enhanced and/or impeded, the campaign for rural

broadband?

INTERVIEWEE I think it was an essential early part of the system that has

been created and for those who..

MEMO 28

INTERVIEWEE: continued: ..are coming on, it perhaps is still performing

function of after my bit.. after I’ve registered my interest. It is a great deal less

active than in the first stages, but I think that is true for any website.. interactive

website, because obviously in the first place you do get the true enthusiasts who

want to gabble.. so it’s perhaps less of an enthusing process for the marginally

indifferent who could be tipped into activity than it was twelve months ago. There’s

so much less going on that you..

INTERVIEWER: But the activity is happening but..



INTERVIEWEE: There is lots happening but it’s elsewhere.. and within the

communities not just the pilot communities either.. you know, there are other groups

working actively towards doing things..

Q12. INTERVIEWER: And then, with hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, how do

you think that this online.. the social media tool might have been used more

effectively?

INTERVIEWEE: I have thought about that but I’m not sure because as you

say there is a dissonance in an online tool being developed to promote connectivity

in areas where there is none. But then, if you like it, it’s a.. Oh.. this is something

really exciting that’s happening that proves it’s much more important for us to have

it.. I think, probably, as I said, it could have been simpler, and then it would have

been.. it wouldn’t have intimidated some people. Because I think that is the right

word, they were intimidated by it, you know.. it was a sense of ‘Well, I just don’t

understand it, this is a lot too complicated for me.. I can’t find my way about it’. And

yet.. because as DB is young and enthusiastic and knowledgeable.. you know.. to

him it all made sense.. and it was.. he couldn’t see any reason why.. I am sure

that’s what he felt. Because you are not scared of technology when you are

young.. and people are scared of the software.. It’s probably the software that

intimidates you more than the hardware because you don’t.. you know, you just

assume your hardware is working whereas the software might make you break it..

INTERVIEWER: Yeah..

INTERVIEWEE: But it doesn’t really..

Q13. INTERVIEWER: No. And then, is there anything that you would like to just

add to what you have already said.. cause you have obviously thought about the

whole thing a lot. You know, you’ve ...from the overall to the small.. I mean you’ve

obviously thought about it quite widely.

INTERVIEWEE: Well, I think you have to if you are interested, don’t you?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think so.

INTERVIEWEE: Well I think I’ve probably gabbled on enough!

INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much!