UCLA researchers to study Internet, society

Los Angeles Times

University of California-Los Angeles researchers are expected to unveil plans today for an ambitious, long-term study designed to track the social consequences of the Internet and its expanding role in consumers' lives.

The project will involve periodic surveys of thousands of households in up to 18 countries, and has the financial backing of technology giants including America Online Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The study is being supervised by UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, which has been a leader in researching such issues as violence in television programming. Researchers said the study's first set of results could be released in the fall, but it is designed to carry on for decades, and is getting under way at a critical time in communications history. "Imagine how much we would have learned if a study of this type had been conducted of television beginning in the early 1950s," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the UCLA center and principal investigator of the study. Cole said this project is the first long-term study designed to track over years the Internet's influence on everything from political attitudes to shopping habits. Much of the study, Cole said, will focus on disparities between households that use the Internet and those that don't. Today, an estimated 50 percent of U.S. households have computers, but fewer than one in four households has Internet access. Preliminary surveys of 2,000 statistically selected households in the United States are set to begin within six weeks, Cole said. The project is expected to cost between $600,000 and $800,000 per year and will depend heavily on funding from sponsors including the Walt Disney Co., Sony Corp., GTE Corp. and Pacific Bell.

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