SENSE-MAKING METHODOLOGY EXEMPLAR STUDY PUTTING THE MISSING USER BACK INTO TELECOMMUNICATION POLICY RESEARCH: APPLYING SENSE-MAKING METHODOLOGY by

1. THE PHENOMENON Our work on adding the “missing user” to the telecommunication (telecom) policy discourse reaches back to the early 1990s.(1) Much like today, policy debates at the time raged over issues such as the upgrading of telecom networks and the need for new services, the (re)definition of universal service, the emergence of “information age” inequalities (e.g., the rural-urban divide) and telecom privacy. Regulators, legislators, the courts, scholars, industry representatives, consumer advocates, and civil liberty groups contested these issues from perspectives rooted in various social sciences, particularly economics, but also philosophy and legal theory. Yet there was (and still is) a conspicuous paucity in the policy discourse when it came to users’ perspectives both in terms of their telecom needs and behaviors, and their understandings and perceptions of the policy issues of the day. Understanding and developing the implications of these perspectives is the phenomenon of interest (Dervin & Shields, 1990, 1999; Shields & Dervin, 1998; Shields, Dervin, Richter & Soller, 1993).