Frozen Screens: Discourses of Nunavummiut Internet

• Main Author: Coelho, Kareena
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Goldsmiths, University of London 2018
• Subjects: Canada; Nunavut; Iqaluit
• Online Access: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24117/; https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24117/1/MED_thesis_CoelhoK_2018.pdf

This interdisciplinary project examines discourses of internet in Nunavut, a territory in Northern Canada. It has two main arguments: that internet in Nunavut is implicated in correlated discourses of frustration and potential, and that internet in the territory is articulated as having multiple faces and facets. Internet in Nunavut, this thesis argues, is experienced as a media technology, as a tool for communication, as political, as failing and frustrating, as online content, as physical infrastructure, and as potential. In making its arguments, the thesis engages with debates about internet governance, the cultural specificity of internet, and the definition of internet itself. Primary research methods for this thesis included: interviews conducted over the telephone or Skype in London (UK), face to face interviews in Ottawa, Toronto and Iqaluit, the analysis of archival materials (in particular, government reports), as well as a limited period of participant-observation at the Community Access Program site in Iqaluit (the capital of Nunavut). The first empirical chapter in the thesis (Chapter 4: “So frustrating”) examines narratives of Nunavummiut users concerning their experiences of internet; the second (Chapter 5: Fractious Collaborations) examines how some Northern internet activists have lobbied the federal government to alter its internet policy, as a means of tapping into Nunavummiut internet's potential; and the third (Chapter 6: A Local Connection) and final empirical chapter explores the Community Access Program (which provides internet access free of charge to the Nunavummiut public), as a means of linking macro-perspectives and discourses of internet