Australia remains a nation digitally divided according to new research conducted by the ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI).

As members of the CCI, Swinburne researchers Professor Julian Thomas and Scott Ewing surveyed 1000 Australians about their internet use. The result was the Digital Futures Report - which reveals the initial findings of the Australian arm of the World Internet Project.

The report found that while almost three quarters of Australians use the internet and almost 80 per cent of these users have home broadband connection, one fifth of Australians have never used the net.

As lead investigator Thomas puts it: “There is a digital divide in Australia – and it reflects patterns of uptake that are repeated elsewhere in the prosperous West. If you’re male, employed or studying, if you have a university degree and a higher than average income, you are more likely to be online.”

The study also found that broadband technology – as opposed to dial-up connection – changes what people do in fundamental ways. According to this new research, the internet is now rivalling, and at times, superseding traditional media, particularly television. Users reported spending less time watching television, listening to the radio and reading newspapers than non-users. Users are also more likely to turn to the net as their primary source of information for important news stories.

These findings become even more significant with the realisation that the net is changing politics, as seen in the federal election last year. Just under half of users polled agreed the internet has become important for the political campaign process.

Like the Human Genome Project, this large-scale study of the net “is an ambitious, collaborative, world-wide attempt to map something that was until very recently unthinkable”, Thomas claims. He believes it has the potential “to tell us a great deal about who we now are – or more precisely, who Australians are becoming in the new era of networks.” On a macro level, Thomas also believes that the Australian arm of the project “will help us gauge the real prospects for turning Australia into one of those new, desirable ‘knowledge economies’ based on innovation and creativity”.

The report is freely available online here.