This article discusses the danger of a growing digital divide between rural and other areas. It presents broadband as increasingly necessary for the delivery of information, health, education, business, social security, public and leisure services. Access to broadband has become vital for rural communities to participate in a progressively digital economy and to overcome problems of physical and social isolation. Yet rural areas are among those most excluded from fast broadband developments. Although this is partly due to technological/economic barriers in reaching more remote locations, even where technology is available, adoption can still be low in rural areas. This article explores the problems of providing broadband in rural Britain, considers various technological approaches and concludes with key development areas for policy and government.

This article develops understanding of cultural and digital capital in order to evaluate the contribution of creative practitioners to rural community resilience. Online practices today impact on creative work in rural locales in a number of ways. However, exactly how they extend ‘reach’ and contribute to rural creativity deserves greater attention. We examine how broadband Internet access and online practices impact on rural creative work and, in turn, how this enables creatives to participate at different levels in their rural communities, thus contributing to research into both rural community resilience and rural creative economies by providing in‐depth qualitative analysis. Through interviews undertaken in rural Scotland, the article outlines the implications of poor rural Internet connectivity for creative economies and explores the impact of this on the role of creatives in their rural communities and their ‘community‐focused’ creative activities. Our findings suggest creative practitioners are using digital technologies and adaptive approaches to overcome barriers to connectivity and to remain in rural locations. Creatives are invested in their communities and their rurality on a number of levels, contributing to community resilience through building cultural capital in diverse ways, and to ‘ripple effects’ from online activities.

The four editors of this special issue led research at the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, a research centre funded by the RCUK Digital Economy programme (award reference: EP/G066051/1). Some of this research is presented in papers in this special issue.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Over the past decade, the number of people engaging with social media has grown rapidly. This means that social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are potentially good sources of rich, naturally occurring data. As a result, a growing number of researchers are utilizing these platforms for the collection of data on any number of topics. To date, no consistent approach to the ethics of using social media data has been provided to researchers in this sphere. This chapter presents research that has developed an ethics framework for the use of researchers working with social media data. The chapter also presents the framework itself and guidance on how to use the framework when conducting social media research. A full report can be accessed on: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/research/new-europe-centre/information-societies-projects-225.php

The research reported here is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub (award reference: EP/G066051/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD