Broadband and the 'Creative Internet': Australians as consumers and producers of cultural content online

This paper analyses and builds on sample survey data collected as part of the Australian component of the World Internet Project. The focus of this paper is on what we can call the ‘creative Internet’ — in brief, those ‘creative uses’ of the net ranging from relatively straightforward user-generated content such as sharing photographs to the distribution of more complex amateur-produced material. We present a brief overview of the ‘creative Internet’ in Australia, and its relationship to the take-up of broadband access. We examine the roles that age, gender and broadband access play in user’s propensity to engage in creative uses of the technology, as well as respondents’ attitudes to these endeavours.