Merit's Technology Impact Research
Merit’s Technology Impact Research division seeks to explore the experiences of citizens, students, municipalities, and businesses in relation to digital information to advance issues of technology understanding and information equity.
Researchers have demonstrated that multiple layers of the digital divide exist and factors not typically associated with these technologies impact successful outcomes. Simply focusing on mapping, access, devices and access quality misses other potential variables that create barriers to digital inclusion and inhibits the ability to maximally benefit from technology and the flow of digital information.
Current Technology Impact Research projects include:
- The development of an interdependent digital opportunities framework and practitioner tool that considers social factors such as, but not limited to, literacy rates, physical infrastructure like the presence of community anchor institutions and libraries, and access availability mapping data and their effects on digital inclusion. Read the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society op-ed.
- Collaborative crowdsourced broadband data collection, mapping, and analysis through Merit’s Michigan Moonshot initiative. This program leverages citizen-science and open-source broadband speed testing through grassroots efforts and local engagement to create robust data sets that demonstrate community sentiment, access and adoption capabilities and inform future broadband investment.
- Longitudinal collaborative investigation of the implications of home internet connectivity on Michigan’s K-12 students.
- Investigation of the ways in which GIS and mapping can be layered with socio-demographic information to positively impact digital inclusion within communities.
Publications and Presentations
Other research investigations under consideration include:
- A Comprehensive Framework to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy
- Digital Opportunities Compass
- A Passion for Community Drives Broadband Forward in Holland, Michigan
- Building Broadband Momentum in Berrien County
Merit’s Technology Impact Research Division pursues the understanding of the societal impacts of technology, broadband and information access for the purpose of making the world a better place to learn, discover, work and live. We welcome cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional research collaborations and encourage those working in qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods technology research to contact us.