SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore DOI: 10.1177/097172180801300208 Integrating the Internet into Farming Activities: A Study of Farmer Users

This study has selected Shouguang city and Huanglou town, two relatively developed rural places in the coastal province of Shandong, China, to explore the signifi cance of the Internet in the perception of farmers and the ways by which it has been used as a tool to improve their lives. The fi ndings show that the increase of wealth has not propelled a large number of farmers at the research sites to adopt the Internet even though they can afford computers and network facilities. Instead, Internet adoption and usage are closely connected with rural entrepreneurs and their private enterprises. The three rural entrepreneurs covered in the study started to experiment with the Internet long before their peers, especially at a time when the advantages of the technology had not fully demonstrated themselves. On account of their favourable attitudes towards technologies and relatively strong command of fi nancial resources, the venturesome rural pioneers are more likely to stand up to the possible risks associated with Internet adoption. They act as gatekeepers when imparting innovative information carried over the Internet to rural people nearby. Their adoption behaviours may infl uence how people perceive the Internet and let the benefi ts derived from the Internet trickle down to those non-adopters. NEW INFORMATION AND communication technologies (ICT), with the Internet as their chief embodiment, have radically changed the modes of production and organisation of work at a global level, and precipitated the transition from Fordism to Gatesism (Tremblay 1995). The non-hierarchical archi-tecture, interactivity and the liberating nature of Internet technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities for human development