The disparities in internet use and access, more broadly dubbed “the digital divide,” have been the subject of much scholarly debate. While the rural/urban divide has been discussed in existing digital divide literature, the primary focus of this body of research has been on documenting current or trying to improve future physical access to internet technologies in rural areas. This type of research works well for examining the digital divide numerically, but it is not sufficient in explaining the implications of social uses and understandings of the Internet. Simply providing rural residents with physical access to the internet will not bridge the digital divide nor encourage rural users to incorporate the technology in ways similar to those in urban areas. Even if the majority of rural residents had the same physical access (in both quantity and quality of connections) as those in urban areas, the ways they understand and use the internet in their specific social context would vary widely. Therefore, this project adds to the ongoing digital divide discussion by qualitatively investigating how people living in rural America, a population generally overlooked in digital divide research, are talking about, and thus socially constructing, the meaning of the internet in their unique social contexts. Of primary interest will be how people in this population are making sense of and using internet technologies in their everyday lives.