HOUSEHOLD INFORMATION-SYSTEMS - AN INTEGRATED VIEW

The authors and their colleagues are engaged in a study of home information systems in the UK. The project will cover cable and satellite transmission (United Artists and BSkyB have invested heavily in Central Scotland), multimedia CDs and paper-based systems. The project will work at several levels, addressing macro level national policy for inward investment; the socio-cultural problem of media provision by foreign multinationals and the role of local (in this case Scottish) identity; and the local issue of resource management of potentially competing media within the domestic space. The aim of the project is to derive, by mapping the dynamics of production and consumption, a theory of household information systems which will inform investors, producers and consumers in a given region. The theoretical background to the project draws on different disciplinary frameworks: economic policy for inward investment, the moral and political economy of the household, theories of local identity, and information needs analysis. The paper will focus on methodology: models of the household, gaining access, choice of protocols, selection of issues for structured interviews, and will report on a pilot instrument which will be tested in ten households in the Spring of 1995