SAI: The Legitimacy of Data-Driven Governance for Broadband Infrastructure

This project, which entails $750K in funding from the National Science Foundation, will address the intersection of technical and social challenges for measuring and investing in broadband infrastructure at the scale of meaningful human geographies, such as blocks, neighborhoods, villages, communities, townships, and cities. Professor Nicole Marwell’s research team will draw on the literature in policy implementation and the use of research evidence to motivate research questions about the case of broadband infrastructure policy implementation. The team will position these questions in relation to its ongoing work to develop new approaches to measuring broadband performance in order to improve digital equity. The project aims to offer an integrative research approach to a national infrastructure that currently is undergoing significant transformation.