[Heavily reformatted; apologies for any formatting problems.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" option. For information about RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 11:56:22 -0000 From: "Loader, Brian" <B.D.Loaderat_private> Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Relations Edited by Leigh Keeble & Brian D. Loader Routledge, 2001 ISBN 0415231116 (hardcover), 0415231124 (paperback) Will the Internet destroy community life or be the catalyst for its resurrection? Community groups, social support networks, voluntary agencies and government organisations are all actively exploring the potential of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) to bring about democratic development and renewal. A rich variety of social experiments in what has become known as Community Informatics is now beginning to provide useful research findings and exciting examples of innovative applications. This book sets down some of the defining features of a Community Informatics approach and some of the common themes which are emerging. In particular it considers the following issues: * Sustainability * Employment * Community management * Public service provision * Partnerships of stakeholders * Local learning * Social support and networks This edited collection brings together leading exponents of Community Informatics from around the world and critically evaluates their experiences. CONTENTS Notes on Contributors Preface by Howard Rheingold 1. Community Informatics: themes & issues Leigh Keeble & Brian Loader 2. Staten Island Stories - handing over the tools of video communi-creation Perry Bard Part 1 -- Communaity Informatics as Place and Space 3. Physical Place & Cyberplace: The Rise of Networked Individualism Barry Wellman 4. Creating Community in Conspiracy with the Enemy Erik Stolterman 5. The Technological Story of a Woman's Centre: A Feminist Model of User Centred Design Eileen Green & Leigh Keeble 6. The Safety Net? Some reflections on the emergence of computer mediated self-help and social support. Nicholas Pleace, Roger Burrows, Brian D Loader, Sarah Nettleton & Steve Muncer Part 2 -- The Experience of Community Informatics 7. Community Networks and Access for all in the Era of the 'Free' Internet: "Discovering the Treasure" of community. Fiorella De Cindio, L Ripamonti & G Casapulla. 8. On Crafting a Study of Digital Community Networks: theoretical and methodological considerations. Nicholas Jankowski, Martine Van Selm & Ed Hollander. 9. Community Networking in Russia: identifying the research agenda. Sergei Stafeev 10. Some Lessons of Social Experiments with Technology Birgit Jaeger 11. Change Agency and Women's Learning: new practices in Community Informatics Anne Scott & Margaret Page Part 3 -- Electronic Empowerment and Surveillance 12. Social Capital and Cyberpower in the African American Community: A case study of a community technology centre in the dual city. Abdul Alkalimat & Kate Williams 13. Online Forums as a Tool for People-Centred Governance: experiences from local government in Sweden. Agneta Ranerup 14. Surveillance in the Community: Community development through the use of Closed Circuit Television. C William, R Webster & John Hood 15. The Techno-Flaneur: Tele-Erotic Re-Presentations of Women's Life spaces Tamara Seabrook & Louise Wattis Part 4 -- Policy Implications of Community Informatics 16. Community Informatics: Setting out the Research Agenda Mike Gurstein 17. Cultivating Society's Civic Intelligence: patterns for a new "world brain". Doug Schuler 18. Participating in the Information Society: Community Development and Social Inclusion Peter Day 19. Communities and Community E-Gateways: Networking for Social Inclusion Sonia Liff & Fred Steward Glossary Bibliography Index Chapter One A human being has roots by virtue of his (sic) real, active and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. (Weil, 1952:41) Introduction Throughout the world in recent years there has been a dramatic surge of activity by hundreds of community groups, social support networks, voluntary agencies and government organisations dedicated to exploring the transforming qualities of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet for the development, economic regeneration, and democratic stimulation of communities. A rich variety of social experiments in what we term Community Informatics (CI) are giving community activists, policy-makers and citizens a new set of possibilities for fostering social cohesion, strengthening neighbourhood ties, overcoming cultural isolation and combating social exclusion and deprivation. For some commentators the new media offer us the prospect of resuscitating community life from its torpid condition in the modern world (Rheingold 1994; Schuler 1996). Computer-mediated social relations are depicted as the conduit through which new forms of community structures and culture can evolve through spontaneous electronic interaction. The rapid convergence of new media such as the Internet, digital TV, cell phones and other ICTs is providing a powerful set of tools with which to challenge many aspects of our social and economic behaviour. In the home, at work and in our public spaces these technologies are beginning to facilitate new patterns of social interaction and exchange. By enabling communication between people to be conducted across the world at any time they begin to challenge traditional distinctions of time and place. News of human rights violations, environmental catastrophes or military aggression can no longer be easily suppressed by nation states (Hick et al 2000). Medical advice and social support can be shared across national boundaries (Burrows et al 2000). Remote locations can offer the ideal prospect of employment opportunities for tele-working and local economic sustainability. In addition, e-commerce provides the potential for producers to access wider markets to sell their goods and services and also for greater price responsiveness to customer demands. For many commentators the transforming capabilities of the new digital media are providing the conditions for an economic and social revolution leading to the collapse of the Industrial Society and its replacement by the Information Age (Castells, 1996). At the heart of this transition is the creation of a 'global knowledge economy' where the communication of information, knowledge and other symbolic goods rather than material goods becomes the primary motor for economic development. As a consequence governments and policy makers around the world are urgently extolling the need to put their populations online by sponsoring awareness raising programmes, computer literacy courses, and connecting schools, libraries and other public amenities to the Internet (Cabinet Office 2000, HM Treasury 2000, NTIA 2000). To be without access to the Web in the Information Age it seems is to run the risk of losing competitive advantage in the race for economic prosperity. Yet information, knowledge and its communication are not simply economic variables, they are also cultural assets. They enable us to create our identities, develop a shared sense of community, and gain an understanding of communities which are different from ourselves. The transforming force of the information revolution is not therefore primarily technical but rather social and cultural in nature (Loader et. al. 2002). New forms of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) are challenging our self-perceptions and the communities within which we interact. But they are also in turn being shaped by social and cultural forces. The technologies are not inert. They are not independent of the social and cultural conditions from which they have emerged. Rather they are the product of imaginations which are themselves formed within complex and dynamic cultural, economic and political relations. The social crucible of technological development is therefore both a highly contested space as well as a creative one. Competing desires and unequal access to human resources ensures that the factors shaping the development and diffusion of community informatics are highly unpredictable and not easily determined by those who deign to prophesise them. Few can now doubt the enormous potential of new information and communications technologies (ICTs) such as the Internet for facilitating social and economic change. But are the impressive transforming capabilities of this new media likely to regenerate community social relations during the next century or are they the harbinger of the breakdown of locally based social interaction? Can the Internet, for example, strengthen bonds between neighbours, provide job opportunities, improve local access to public and commercial services, stimulate cultural activities and facilitate the creation and communication of information between local residents? Or conversely, does online connectivity lead to the replacement of face-to-face interaction by an incorporeal communication network? (Kraut et al., 1998). Does remote computer-mediated communication (CMC) lead to remoteness between individuals who share the same geographical community space? (Haywood, 1998) These questions are the primary focus of this book. Whilst somewhat exaggerated in their starkness, they represent significant concerns which human societies are currently grappling with as a consequence of an uneasy alliance with the new ICTs. This ambivalence is played out through a number of dichotomies which arise from the catalytic qualities of the new technologies. For example, its capacity to facilitate the development of a 'global informational economy' (Castells 1996) provides great opportunities for opening up world-wide economic markets but also for placing many regions into economic insecurity as a result of global competition. A global network facilitating contact between millions of people across many nations may not only stimulate greater co-operation and understanding but also a weakening of national and local cultural differences as we witness an increasing cultural homogenisation. The development of online public information services may provide the prospect of improved democratic accountability between local citizens and their elected representatives but it could also provide the tools for more sophisticated management of the population. Surveillance technologies such as CCTV may enable community members to feel safer in their streets and homes but the information such technologies procure may also threaten people's privacy and freedom from commercial or state abuse. Such competing scenarios are woven throughout the chapters contained in this book. What is Community Informatics? Community Informatics is a multidisciplinary field for the investigation and development of the social and cultural factors shaping the development and diffusion of new ICTs and its effects upon community development, regeneration and sustainability. It thereby combines an interest in the potentially transforming qualities of the new media with an analysis of the importance of community social relations for human interaction. Community Informatics is therefore concerned to foreground through its analyses the complex dynamic relationship between technological innovation and changing social relationships. It pursues this objective by bringing together and drawing upon the work of community activists, webmasters and Internet enthusiasts, policy makers, digital artists, science fiction writers, media commentators and a wide variety of academics including sociologists, computer scientists, communications theorists, information systems analysts, political scientists, psychologists and many more. Community informatics is also a broad approach which offers on the one hand, the opportunity to investigate the rich diversity of Virtual Communities which are forming between normally disparate individuals as a consequence of CMC (Smith et al 1999). Typically these are communities of shared interest rather than spatially or geographically constructed. Through a variety of Internet and Web-based technologies millions of people are able to interact socially, economically and politically around the world in what is popularly known as cyberspace. On the other hand, community informatics, as we have noted elsewhere, also enables us to connect cyber-space to community-place: to investigate how ICTs can be geographically embedded and developed by community groups to support networks of people who already know and care about each other. It thereby recognises both the transforming qualities of ICTs as well as the continuing importance of community as an intermediate level of social life between the personal (individual/family) and the impersonal (insqtitutional/global). The numerous community enthusiasts ... who are building interactive Web sites, virtual chat rooms and electronic-lists as tools to support local communication between their members, are a striking testament to the value of a CI perspective. (Loader et al. 2000:81) Such initiatives however are not uniform in their spread across the globe or indeed throughout national populations (Holderness 1998, Loader 1998). At a time when the value of being 'connected to the Net' for individual life opportunities is being recognised, there is also a growing concern among policy-makers that many countries are witnessing a 'digital divide' between those members of society who have access to networked computers and the skills to use them and a large section of citizens who are excluded from such advantages. Given the perceived increasing importance of communications and information exchange for job opportunities, educational achievement, access to good quality public services, improved independent living and economic advantage these divisions between the information rich and the information deprived may become reinforced by the manner in which the new technologies are designed and dispersed. Consequently many community informatics initiatives often arise as a means to raise awareness of the importance of computer literacy to people living in deprived areas as well as providing them with communal access and training opportunities. Yet to be effective in bridging the digital divide CI perspectives need to avoid approaches which assume that communities are 'densely- knit and tightly bound' (Wellman et al., 1999). The reality for many individuals is that their 'personal communities' are 'sparsely knit and loosely bound' (ibid.). Within these fluid community networks the new media provides the opportunities of enabling people to span across geographical, social and cultural boundaries and constraints. The new media thus offers the potential of being used as a liberating and empowering tool by many people and particularly more relevant here, for the disadvanted and excluded, to 'challenge entrenched positions and structures' (Loader et. al., 2000:87). The Internet and World Wide Web allow individuals access to global information and potentially provide a space for participation without preconceived socially constructed identities based on gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, disability and the like constraining meaningful interaction. Many of the community informatics initatives mentioned in this book demonstrate potential of ICTs to support, strengthen and extend individuals 'personal communities'. Structure of the book The first contribution in the book is from Perry Bard, a video artist based in New York. A key component of the conference, which we held in April 2000, was digital arts. We ran two different digital arts projects over the duration of the conference. Firstly, Perry worked with a group of young people aged 16-25 from a local young people's project, M@RC. The young people and Perry spent a couple of days with a mini-disc recorder and a digital camera. The young people and Perry then cut together a PowerPoint presentation with words, sounds and images which presented the issues which faced young people in Middlesbrough. The piece was presented to the conference participants on the final day of the conference. The second digital arts project was an artslab in which young people aged 11-13 worked with Jen Southern and other artists from the IDEA (Innovation in Digital and Electronic Art) project based in Manchester, UK. Jen worked with the young people teaching them HTML and scanning in parts of their body and working with the digital camera. Each of the young people participating in the project produced their own web page and learnt to use photo-editing software, the scanner and the digital camera. The picture on the cover of this book originates from this artslab and we are grateful for opportunity to reproduce it. Our motive for including the digital arts work in the conference was our recognition that arts are potentially a powerful way of engaging people with the new technologies. In particular, we are keen to explore how young people might make use of different software and how they might use it to give themselves a voice. Our colleague, Rupert Francis, was fundamental in the organising and running of the digital arts section of the conference. The benefits of working creatively with technology are many. Over the course of our work on various projects, our colleagues have demonstrated how this work has the potential to boost confidence, expand social skills and enhance literacy and numeracy. Rupert Francis and Steve Thompson of CIRA work to promote the idea that there is a sense of empowerment in creation, in creating and in being creative. Effective examples of such work can be seen on the Tees Valley Communities Online web site at: www.tvco.org.uk. The contribution by Perry Bard which follows this chapter describes a project in which she worked with a small community to install a piece of video art into the Staten Island Ferry Terminal building. Perry describes the processes involved in realising the project and some of the problems encountered. However, despite the difficulties, the end result is a piece of work which has given the individuals involved a great deal of pleasure and which has undoubtedly taught them some new skills. The remainder of the collection has been divided into four parts. The first section we have called 'Community Informatics as Place and Space' as the essays which form this section explore the relationship of physical place to the engagement of individuals within cyberspace. In first chapter in this section (chapter three), Barry Wellman explores how networks of community exist in physical places and how they might be moving to exist in cyberspace. The relationship of cyber-space to cyber-place is important to Wellman. He argues that online relationships and online communities have developed their own strength and dynamics. Wellman identifies that participants in online groups have strong interpersonal feelings of belonging, being wanted, obtaining important resources, and having a shared identity. For Wellman, these communities are truly in cyber-place, and not just cyber-spaces. Wellman also examines the development of computer supported community networks and how this affects access to resources. Wellman focuses on the opportunities and transformations for communities afforded by computerised communication networks. Chapter four is about the design of the technology by the public. Erik Stolterman argues that in a democratic society, a public sphere in cyberspace must be defined and designed by the people using that sphere. Stolterman suggests that technology can be deliberately and consciously designed by community groups, and in fact, this happens every day. The overall message of this chapter is that technology cannot be regarded as a ready-made tool that can be used to create community. The issue of the design of technology is picked up in chapter five. Eileen Green and Leigh Keeble use case studies of two women's centres from the North East of England and describe how the women themselves are taking the new technologies and integrating them into their 'everyday'. The chapter addresses the issue of the everyday design of technological systems and asks questions about the potential of the women in the community groups to become involved in a user-centred process of community based design. Chapter six looks at the impact of computer mediated social support (CMSS). Nicholas Pleace, Roger Burrows, Brian Loader, Sarah Nettleton and Steve Muncer examine the benefits of CMSS and acknowledge its potential to enhance the lives of some individuals by offering access to communities of interest. Such communities are potentially of particular benefit to individuals who are housebound. However, the authors do express some words of caution and remain critical of the ability of CMSS to replace 'real life' social networks or to be the only source of information. Part two of the collection moves on to explore some real experiences of community informatics. The first chapter in section two by Fiorella de Cindio et al. (chapter seven) begins by discussing access to the new technologies and the impact of such access on the Milan community network. The chapter then explores how access has been facilitated and extended through the design and implementation of a game, 'Cyberhunts'. The chapter describes how 'Cyberhunts' began by engaging schools but then moved on to involve other members of the wider community as word of its success spread. The game and process described by de Cindio et al. demonstrates how innovative software can be used in an effective way to teach people how to use the Internet in an informal and fun way. Chapter eight by Nicholas Jankowski, Martine Van Selm and Ed Hollander discusses the development of a research project around two digital community networks in the Netherlands. Jankowski et al. do present some findings of a preliminary study conducted on one of the community networks but the focus of this chapter is on considering theoretical perspectives and methodological issues in relation to researching community informatics projects. The next chapter in this section is a contribution by Sergei Stafeev. Stafeev explores the issues around developing a research programme which would support the funding of Internet connections for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Russia. Stafeev's main theme is that the Internet potentially offers NGOs in Russia not just access to a wide range of information, but more importantly, a networking tool which could support Russian NGOs in their work. Birgit Jaeger explores in chapter ten the impact of ICT projects in Europe and more specifically, Denmark. Jaeger describes the development of 'social experiments' in Denmark and discusses how such projects have been evaluated, what lessons have been learned and how these lessons have been disseminated to other projects. The final chapter in this section examines how to sustain community informatics projects in women's centres. Anne Scott and Margaret Page focus on the experience of the 'Women Connect' project and argue that online communities need to be built in such a way as to utilize face-to-face interaction and political will. Section three of the collection brings together chapters which tackle the issues of empowerment and surveillance. Whilst some of the chapters in this section do present case study material, their main focus is on how technologies can be used to empower individuals or communities or how the introduction of CCTV has impacted on a local community. The first chapter in this section, chapter 13, is the contribution by Abdul Alkalimat and Kate Williams. This chapter focuses on the experiences of a community technology centre based in Toledo, Ohio. The main objective of the chapter is to establish how public computer centres can play a role in sustaining the African American freedom struggle. The chapter concludes by drawing out the implications of this research both as guidelines for future research but also for the public sphere. Alkalimat and Williams argue that building a sustainable democratic equality in the Information Age means working and supporting people with information technology in those organisations which are already active. Agneta Ranerup continues with the theme of democracy in chapter 14. Ranerup focuses on whether local government initiatives in Sweden established to provide a virtual public space have functioned as a tool for people centred governance. From her survey of local government provision in Sweden, Ranerup found that simply establishing a space on a local government web site will not suddenly result in citizens starting to debate. Ranerup concludes, like Alkalimat and Williams, that without support, these spaces are not sustainable. The next two chapters in this section examine the impact of closed circuit television (CCTV) in different local communities. William Webster and John Hood argue (chapter 15) that the introduction of CCTV into an area is a community informatics initiative as it represents the provision of an electronic service to meet local demand. Drawing on evidence from a case study based on the Greater Easterhouse CCTV system, Webster and Hood suggest that whilst CCTV can be in the community, for the community and demanded by the community, it inevitably leads to increased surveillance of communities which has significant ramifications for democracy and individual privacy. The issue of surveillance is further explored by Tamara Seabrook and Louise Wattis in chapter 16. Seabrook and Wattis focus on the perceptions of young women to the introduction of CCTV in their local community. They argue that although the young women in their sample viewed the cameras as providing them with greater interpersonal safety, the reality is that when the nature of public crime is deconstructed in relation to gender, this sense of protection that CCTV offers is unfounded. Accordingly, Seabrook and Wattis suggest that CCTV represents a 'heightened manifestation of the male gaze' which legitimises men watching women. The final section in the collection examines the potential research and policy agenda of community informatics both in the Europe and North America. Mike Gurstein opens this section (chapter 17) by exploring the history of 'citizen technology' and discussing strategies for local development by using the new technologies. Gurstein addresses some of the outstanding research issues identified through his work and concludes by examining some of the future implications for research and sustaining community informatics projects. Doug Schuler's chapter (chapter 18) is designed to challenge the pessimistic and defeatist views of our capabilities to confront and overcome many of the social and environmental problems facing us. Through an evocation of earlier utopian visions of human society using scientific knowledge and technologies as a means of amelioration, Schuler presents us with a new formulation which he describes as a 'world brain'. Whilst such futuristic theorising is highly unfashionable the author attempts to ground his idea in the work and practices of the social network movement. In particular, Schuler suggests that many of the problems confronting society can be understood and challenged by mobilising what he calls 'civic intelligence': that is collective knowledge and its communication used as a means for collective problem solving. Such an approach is clearly ambitious and Schuler makes no claims for it being a panacea for all our ills but for the author, it does represent a positive, evidence-based proposal for civic engagement. The contribution by Peter Day (chapter 19) draws on a longitudinal study of Scandinavian and UK community ICT initiatives to examine tensions between policy and some of the attempts to address social exclusion through ICT initiatives. Day describes the UK policy environment in relation to ICTs and reflects on these policies. Day concludes that despite the rhetoric of UK government policy in relation to access and involving citizens in the decision-making process, policies remain fundamentally techno-economic, i.e. policy-makers regard people in terms of their market potential rather than as citizens. Whilst such an approach is identifiable in government policies, Day argues that community efforts to shape information society policy will be limited. He concludes that we must establish a framework of methodological tools that informs policy. The closing chapter in the collection by Sonia Liff and Fred Steward (chapter 20) stresses the importance of social networks to the successful operation of what they call 'e-gateways'. By discussing the practitioner literature on community e-gateways and studies of actual practice, the authors argue that whilst the importance of networking is implicit in much policy advice, its full implications are not always drawn out and are actually contradicted by some funding regimes. By using a network mapping approach to provide a visual representation of the relationships an organisation, Project Cosmic, has with its resource providers and its users, mapped their organisation's assets. However, this mapping is done in a way that is informed by the social scientific understanding of different types of networks and forms of learning. Liff and Steward argue that such analysis might prove useful to centres themselves in identifying areas for future development. Conclusion It is hoped that the contributions to this book go some way towards demonstrating the rich range of community informatics projects which are happening around the world. We also hope that as the implications of living in a global information age become more apparent, the research which informs these contributions may help the future development and sustainability of community informatics projects. end
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