Mobile Phones: Like any Other ICT? - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 97

First, 12 elite actors (e.g. policy-makers,
regulators, researchers, market players etc) were
interviewed and reflected on the low adoption of
the Internet versus the high popularity of mobile
telephony in the country. These were in-depth,
semi-structured interviews of a small-scale and
purposefully selected sample of elite actors in the
Greek information society. Although with small-
scale freestyle interviewing it is not necessary to
include representativeness, I attempted to achieve
a good spread of respondent characteristics so
as to cover the main spectrum of key actors in
the Greek information society. Specifically, the
interviewees were selected after making a list of
key policy, regulatory, market, civic and research
bodies in Greece. Members of those bodies who
play a relevant role concerning the subject matter
of the research were contacted and, after a first
round of telephone communication, 12 of them
were selected.
The interviews were categorised according to
the study's conceptual framework and on the basis
of the professional status of each interviewee.
Thus, the study resulted in three interview perspec-
tives, each being addressed by a separate thematic
guide and with each interviewee discussing issues
derived from one interview perspective: scoping,
bottom-up and theory-driven. The scoping per-
spective digged deeper into the scope and focus
of the research and consisted of interviews with
four experts in policy and regulation. These experts
reported on the Greek information society and
echoed the voice of policy and regulatory authori-
ties within and outside the country. The bottom-up
perspective aimed to examine issues that derive
from the web of social actors. Three interviewees
associated with Greek society in general and with
the community of Greek users of ICTs in particular
were selected to inform this interview perspective
on the views of the grassroots. The theory-driven
perspective highlighted issues that derive from
the literature and consisted of five interviews.
All five interviews touched upon research areas
that relate to the benefits, risks and implications

of new technology adoption and the ways Greek
society perceives them. The table below presents
the names, expertise and domain of activity of the
interviewees, while it categorises each interviewee
in the three interview perspectives.
Then, a bottom-up perspective on the issue
was taken by interviewing four socio-demograph-
ically diverse focus groups of ordinary people
(i.e. Internet users and non-users). Twenty-five
individuals (Internet users and non-users) formed
the four focus groups. 'Internet usage' was the
only criterion in the sample selection and group
formation, with each group consisting of either
Internet users or non-users. Socio-demographic
diversity was established as shown in the table
below.
The number of groups was decided on the
grounds of the consideration that more than one
group of Internet users and non-users should in-
form the study, while other examples of research
and practical matters concerning time and budget
constraints were also taken into account. The
sample recruitment process was based on the
second phase of research, a survey (not reported
in this chapter), where surveyed individuals were
asked to give their consent to be interviewed. About
350 surveyed individuals agreed to be interviewed
at a later stage and some of them were randomly
contacted by phone and asked to participate in the
interviews. In the end, the 25 individuals described
in the table below participated in the focus groups.
Two thematic guides were used in the focus
groups: one for the groups of Internet users and
another for the groups of non-users. The discus-
sions were loosely structured and involved issues
of ICT usage and reasons driving the non-usage
of communication technologies. Although, the
interpersonal relationship between the interview
situation and any matters arising during the inter-
views could always alter the initial thematic
framework, emphasis was placed on focus group
discourses concerning 'life circumstances',
'choice', 'priorities' and 'identity' so as to trace
and contextualise the range of factors that influ-