Bridging the digital divide in Indigenous communities

Many urban Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, take digital technology for granted.

Yet a significant digital divide exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous people are 69 per cent less likely than non-Indigenous people to have any internet connection and are half as likely to have broadband access, largely as a significant proportion of Indigenous Australians live in rural and remote areas.

Many remote Indigenous communities live without modern conveniences such as broadband connection, wi-fi and in some cases, even mobile phone reception due to their geographical location. These communities are not only missing out on the convenience, access to information and speed of communication afforded by digital technologies – they are also missing out on the opportunities that come with them.

The digital divide currently exacerbates the social disadvantage experienced by many Indigenous Australians, especially in regard to general health and wellbeing, and broader issues, such as having access to education and employment opportunities.

HITnet, an Australian social enterprise, has implemented a solution and has rolled out touch screen kiosks in 70 Indigenous communities across the country, placed in central community areas.

“When you have a holistic understanding of what’s going on in communities, digital technology can provide access to a whole range of information that we take for granted,” says Kristen Smith, a researcher in the Indigenous Studies Unit from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne and a member of the HITnet research project.

HITnet creates the content for the kiosks on a range of health issues including sexual health, cancer, mental illness and nutrition in collaboration with communities and a range of other organisations, for example the Indigenous Hip Hop Project. People are able to view the content at the kiosk or download information from it onto their mobile device. This removes barriers for many people and enables them to seek out information when it suits them. 

The research project, undertaken in collaboration with Deakin University, is assessing how community members use HITnet kiosks and what contributes to their success. As part of her research Ms Smith has travelled to two remote Aboriginal communities in Cape York – Napranum and Pormpuraaw – and is due to travel to the Daly River, Northern Territory and Kununurra, Western Australia in the coming months. There, she will investigate how the kiosks are currently effective and how they can be adapted to meet the evolving and diverse needs of these different communities.

“In Napranum, members of the community said it would be great to have some of their young people trained in how to produce videos so they could create content themselves – and then to do other things like set up a news video service. They have some great ideas but there’s no particular training or capacity, so partnerships with HITnet are important to create capacity.”

The research team has been talking to a wide range of people and organisations to discover who has been interested in the HITnet kiosks and why – and to begin to understand why other people may not have responded as positively. 

“Most people seem to be fairly open to it and interested in seeing how they can advance digital technologies in their communities further,” Ms Smith says.

“I talked to a range of people in Napranum who were very interested, including rangers concerned about the health of their communities, environmentally and generally, and mothers who were concerned about their children’s education and lack of access to information.”

The kiosks have been popular and a successful way of connecting people with valuable health information to improve the current and future health and wellbeing of their communities.

“Even if people aren’t interested in health issues, the kiosk is something that they can look at in the community centre. Videos will get played a lot as they are being disseminated in an interesting way using engaging mediums such as hip hop music. The majority of the content is produced within communities across Australia, which adds to the interest level,” Ms Smith says.

The network received over 60,000 hits in 2013 and nearly 70 per cent of the people seeking information were young people.

“Digital technology has a large role to play in overcoming Indigenous social disadvantage. With access to technology fundamental issues in communities can be solved. Everyone needs to have access to information.”

www.mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/

http://www.hitnet.com.au/