OxIS 2019: New Media Habits Meet the Pandemic and Social Distancing

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many activities, from healthcare to education, to substantially increase their reliance in online media. Even a decade ago, this would have been unthinkable. This move has been remarkably successful, despite major issues, such as around those without access to online services in their household. But this success has not only been a function of access but also the degree to which the Internet and related online services had already been embedded in everyday life and work. This paper documents the embedded nature of the Internet in the case of the many countries and the UK – where going online had become a habit rather than a new thing. This is one of a series of reports on the 2019 Oxford Internet Survey, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. The authors thank the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport; Google Inc., and BT, for their support of this survey. This report is the fourth in the series of reports on OxIS 2019. The first report provided an overview of key themes, see: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3493763 The second focused on the narrowing but deepening digital divides across the nation, see: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3522083 The third focused on the rise of mobile Internet use, see: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3538301 All the reports in this series are available through the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) blog: https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/blog/.