Community informatics
|
|
| Contents |
Introduction
Community Informatics, also known as community networking, electronic community networking, or community technology refers to an emerging set of principles and practices concerned with the use of Information and Communications Technologies for personal, social, cultural or econonomic development within communities, for enabling the achievement of collaboratively determined community goals and for envigorating and empowering communities in relationt their larger social, economic, cultural and political environments.
Communities have been and remain a central element in the structuring of the relationship beteween individuals and between individuals and the larger world in which they live. While the concept of "community" has been subject to a variety of re-analyses and critiques the reality of "community" as a lived and working experience remains, not only for those where the lived community and the physical community overlap as for example in rural areas, but also in urban environments where the reality and significance of neighborhoods, ethnic and cultural associations, and professional interests among others remain central pre-occupations and frameworks for social meaning and social action. Thus "communities", as people coming together in pursuit of their common aims or shared practice both physical and electronically enabled, proliferate even while their "researched" reality remains in considerable dispute. Not surprisingly there is growing interest in how different information and communication technologies can enable and empower these groups in relation to the achievement of their collective goals.
Academic approaches
As an academic discipline community informatics can be seen as a field of practice in applied Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The term was first brought to prominence by Michael Gurstein, who brought out the first representative collection of papers (http://www.idea-group.com/search/index.asp?type=1&query=gurstein) in the field.
It brings together the practices of community development and organization, and insights from fields such as sociology, feminism or library and information and management sciences. Its outcomes -- community networks and community-based ICT enabled service applications -- are of increasing interest to multi-lateral agencies, governments, not for profits and self-organized community initiatives of all persuasions, in many countries, concerned with ways to harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social capital and community development, and as in some cases means to envigorate and empower the local in relation its larger economic, political and social environments disputed as these concepts may be.
It may in fact, not gell as a single field within the academy, akin to Information Systems or Management Information Systems, but remain a convenient locale for interdisciplinary activity, drawing upon many fields of social practice and endeavour, as well as knowledge of community applications of technology. It might be characterized as a postmodern discipline, open to all comers.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the earliest initiatives in community based technologies emerged out of universities where junior faculty and grad students with technical interests and knowledge recognized the possible application of the types of technologies with which they were working professionally in relation to their frequently activitist involvements and interests in their private lives. A pre-cursor to current community networks can be found in the San Francisco and Berkeley University based Community Memory project of the mid-1970's (and a related effort in Vancouver, BC, Canada) which was linked to elements of campus activism at the time and which through providing publicly accessible terminal access to central databases and an electronic bulletin board pre-saged many of the current elements of community networking.
Similarly many of the more recent community networking initiatives emerged out of university faculty and students with an interest in retaining computing and Internet access once they had left their campuses or in making the exciting new ICT resources more widely available within local communities for purposes of social servicing and as a support for local empowerment as for example the Cleveland Freenet, Seattle Community Network, the Milan Community Network, the Amsterdam Free City, VicNet in Australia, the Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada among others.
Given that many of those most actively involved in these efforts were academics (drawn from a wide variety of disciplines) it was only inevitable that a process of "sense-making" with respect to these efforts would follow on quite quickly from the flurry of "tool-making" efforts. A first formal meeting of researchers with an academic interest in these initiatives was held in conjunction with the 1999 Global Community Networking Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This meeting began the process of linking Developed Country community based ICT initiatives and research with initiatives being undertaken in Less Developed Countries often as part of larger economic and social development programmes funded by agencies such as the UN Development Programme, World Bank, or the International Development Research Centre. For the first time, the efforts being undertaken in using ICTs for economic and social development purposes in the Developed Countries began to find common interests and common cause with parallel efforts in Less Developed Countries and similarly those with academic or research activities in these areas began to see common and overlapping interests.
Community-based approaches
Many practitioners would dispute any necessary connection to the academy, regarding academic theorising and interventions as a constraining element on grass-roots activity which should be beyond the control of traditional institutions.
Some of the commonalities and differences may be due to national and cultural differences. For example, the capacity of many North American (and particularly US) universities to engage in service learning as part of progressive charters in communities large and small is part of a long-standing traditon absent elsewhere.
However, the tradition of service learning is almost entirely absent in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand, where the state has traditionally played a much stronger role in the delivery of community services and information.
At the same time, in countries such as the UK, there appears to be a strong tradition of grass roots community technology which is locally based. In Italy and the Netherlands, there also appears to have been a strong connection between the development of local civic networks based around a tradition of civic oppositionism, connected into the work of progressive academics.
In Africa and many parts of Asia these efforts have been driven by external funding agencies as part of larger programs and initiatives in support of broader economic and social development goals.
Tensions
Thus, there is a healthy tension between the practice and research ends of the field. To some extent this reflects the gap, familiar from other disciplines such as community development, community organisation and community based research (http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/), community health and community education, between a desire for accountable - especially quantifiable and outcome-focussed social development, typically practiced by government or supported by foundations, and the more participatory, qualtiatively-rich, process-driven priorities of grass-roots community activists, familiar from theorists such as Paulo Freire, or Deweyan pragmatism.
Some of the theoretical and practical tensions are also familiar from such disciplines as program evaluation and social policy, and perhaps paradoxically, Management Information Systems, where there is continual debate over the relative virtue and values of different forms of research and action spread around different understandings of the virtues or otherwise of allegedly "scientific" or "value-free" activity (frequently associated with "responsible" and deterministic public policy philosophies), contrasted with more interpretive and process driven viewpoints in bottom-up or practice driven activity. Community informatics would in fact probably benefit from closer knowledge of, and relationship to, theorists, practitioners, and evaluators of rigorous qualitative research and practice.
A further concern is the potential for practice to be 'hijacked' by policy or academic agendas, rather than being driven by community goals whether in Developed Country "Digital Divide" programs or in projects situated in Less Developed Countries. Ethical issues around such issues have not been at all explored.
However, explicit theoretical positions and ideological statements or divisions have yet to emerge. Many projects appear to have emerged with no particular disciplinary affiliation, arising more directly from policy or practice imperatives to 'do something' with technology as funding opportunties arise or as local those at the grassroots (or working with the grassroots) identify ICTs as possible resources to respond to local issues, problems or opportunities.
Research and Practice Interests
Research and practice ranges from concerns with purely virtual communities; to situations in which virtual or online communication are used to enhance existing communities in urban, rural, or remote geographic locations in developed or developing countries; to applications of ICTs for the range of areas of interest for communities including social and economic development, environmental management, media and "content" production, public management and e-governance among others. A central concern, although one not always realized in practice is with "enabling" or "empowering" communities with ICTs that is, ensuring that the technology is available for "effective use" [1] (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/gurstein/index.html) by the community. This further implies an approach to development which is rather more "bottom up" than "top down".
Areas of concern range from small scale projects in particular communities or organizations which might involve only a handful of people, such as an on online community of disabled people; telecentres; civic networks (in Europe, see for example Milan Civic network (http://www.retecivica.milano.it/eng/) and ruralnet UK (http://www.ruralnet.org.uk)); to large national, government sponsored networking projects in countries such as Australia or Canada (Networking the Nation and Community Access Program, both now ended); or local community projects such as Smart Newtown (http://www.smartnewtown.org.nz/smart_newtown/); or Computers in Homes (http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz/) working with Maori families in New Zealand. The Gates Foundation has been active in supporting public libraries in countries such as Chile. For examples of ICTs for development in Africa, see Open Knowledge Network (http://www.openknowledge.net/Open). Knet (http://www.knet.ca/) is an example of work with First Nations people in Canada. An area of rapidly developing interest is in the use of ICTs as a means to enhance citizen engagement as an "e-Governance" counterpart (or counterweight) to transaction oriented e-Government initiatives.
Technical Concerns
There is also an emerging interest in the area among those with an interest in the technical, both hardware and software, aspects of "community based" ICT use and applications. In part this is generated by a recognition that new approaches to hardware and software design may be needed to respond to the needs (and markets) found among lower income populations (many of whom may approach computing from a family, group or community perspective). Others approach these issues based on a concern for the social applications and uses of ICTs, while still others have an interest in pursuing these from the perspective of community based ICT strategies for knowledge creation, management and innovation; collaborative decision making and action; and flexible, dispersed and/or community based networking strategies for ICT enabled production and control.
Networks
There are emerging online and personal networks of researchers and practitioners in community informatics and community networking in many countries (see, for example, Community Action Network (http://www.can-online.org.uk)) as well as international groupings. The past decade has also seen conferences in many countries, and there is an emerging literature for theoreticians and practitioners including the new on-line Journal of Community Informatics [2] (http://ci-journal.net).
It is surprising in fact, how much in common is found when people from developed and non-developed countries meet. A common theme is the struggle to convince policy makers of the legitimacy of this approach to developing electronically-literate societies, instead of a top-down or trickle-down approach, or an approach dominated by technical, rather than social solutions which in the end, tend to help vendors rather than communities. A common criticism is that a focus on technical solutions evades the less quantifiable changes that communities need to achieve in their values, activities and other people-oriented outcomes.
The field tends to have a progressive bent, being concerned about the use of technology for social and cultural development connected to a desire for capacity building or expanding social capital, and in a number of countries, governments and foundations have funded a variety of community informatics projects and initiatives, particularly from a more tightly controlled, though not well-articulated social planning perspective, though knowledge about long term effects of such forms of social intervention on use of technology is still in its early stages.
Associations & Publications
National associations and organisations have coalesced around these issues in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and elsewhere. Most recently a community informatics research hub has been established in South Africa at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, that will be hosting the CIRN2005 conference 24-26 August 2005. Relevant online links include the conference (http://www.cirn2005.org) web site, the Community Informatics Research Network (http://www.ciresearch.net) from which connections can be made into listservs and events and The Journal of Community Informatics (http://www.ci-journal.net).
Links
The following is a list of organisations specifically dedicated to research and practice in community informatics and community networking: (practitioners and academics should add their own)
- Community Network Analysis, University of Brighton (http://http://www.cna.org.uk/)
- Centre for Community Networking Research Monash University (http://www.ccnr.net)
- Association for Community Networking (http://www.afcn.org)