Connectivity Literacy for Digital Inclusion in Rural Australia

Low levels of digital inclusion present enduring challenges for rural Australian communities. Not only is there a historic lack of robust telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas, but rural people—including farmers—tend to have fewer digital literacies and skills to effectively use digital connections and technologies. We undertook a qualitative study in the State of Queensland in Australia that aimed to investigate underlying factors of low levels of digital inclusion in rural households and communities. We uncovered a set of essential skills for digital inclusion that did not fit neatly into the three-pillared digital inclusion framework we took into the study. While we did gather insights into farmers’ challenges associated with the pillars of access, affordability, and digital ability, we also observed how people were needing to acquire connectivity literacy (a concept originating from industry but not yet widely investigated by scholars) to achieve digital inclusion. In this chapter, we shed light on the complexities of getting connected and staying connected to telecommunications services in rural Australia. We describe connectivity literacy as being principally about being able to set up local hardware and networks, respond to technical outages when they occur, and navigate a complex consumer environment to ascertain the best connectivity options.