An Introduction to The Journal of Community Informatics
by Peter Miller
The Community Technology Review, aimed at and largely written by practitioners in the United States, has always valued and sought out those innovative programs and individuals in higher education who are bringing theoretical, evaluative, and research perspectives to bear upon the field. Indeed, our home in the emerging and developing Community Media and Technology program in the College of Public and Community Service (CPCS) at UMass/Boston underlines that concern to build firmer bridges between the university and the field of practice, theory and praxis, thought and action.1 The Journal of Community Informatics is similarly oriented, but from the perspective of the academy, and it is emphatically international in scope.
In announcing its premiere issue in early October, Editor-in-Chief Michael Gurstein spelled out: "The Journal of Community Informatics (JoCI)…is a peer-reviewed Open Archive on-line quarterly journal for and by the Community Informatics research community and produced under the auspices of the Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN)." JoCI reflects and is meant to provide leadership in the development of the discipline dedicated to enabling communities with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
"CI" and "ICT" are the increasingly familiar acronyms for the names of the academic field and the emerging technology arena that are well-known in circles where community media and technology is taught and practiced outside the U.S. Canada, South Africa, India, Latin America, Russia—these are the geographic arenas covered by name in the issue's table of contents. Section editors and editorial and review board members come from here, too, and from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, the West Indies, and the U.S., a substantial coming together from all over the world to represent—and help shape the field.
Especially since the first Global Congress on Community Networking held in Barcelona in November 2000 and, more recently, the UN-supported World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in December 2003, academicians and practitioners across the globe have become more aware of each other's work and are playing a growing role in U.S. consciousness about community technology. JoCI will undoubtedly grow as an important venue to learn from and become involved with.
To that end, here is the summary of the JoCI premiere issue articles by editor Michael Gurstein, with some additional notes oriented especially for those involved in the community of practice in the United States. Click on the article titles for article summaries that include links to the full articles in JoCI.
The K-Net Story: Community ICT Development Work, by Brian Beaton
The Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN): A Research Partnership and Agenda for Community Networking in Canada, by Andrew Clement, Michael Gurstein, Graham Longford, Robert Luke, Marita Moll, Leslie Reagan Shade, and Diane DeChief
n-Logue: The Story of a Rural Service Provider In India, by Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Anuradha Ramachandran, and Alankar Bandyopadhyay
Social Appropriation of Internet Technology: a South African Platform, by Geoff Erwin, and Wallace Taylor
Latin American Community Telecenters: "It's a long way to TICperary," by Michel J. Menou, Karin Delgadillo Poepsel, and Klaus Stoll
Building Community Social Capital: The Potential and Promise of Information and Communications Technologies, by Kenneth E. Pigg and Laura Duffy Crank
Towards a Neo-Apartheid System of Governance in Latin America
—Implications for the Community Informatics Guild, by Scott S. Robinson
Local Learnings: An Essay on Designing to Facilitate Effective Use of ICTs, by Tony Salvador and John Sherry
The Role of Community Informatics in Socio-Cultural Transformations in Russia and the CIS, by Sergei Stafeev
Women Connect: Phase 2 Report, by Susan Webb and Kate Jones
Information and Communications Technology/ICT, Community Informatics/CI, the Community Informatics Research Network/CIRN - k-net, n-logue, somos@telecentros - these are some of the developments in community technology that take on a special vividness and connectedness through this issue of JoCI. The second issue, due early in the new year, consists of peer reviewed papers on "Sustainability and Community Technology" presented at the recent CIRN Prato conference on this subject. Work on other issues issues is already underway, submissions welcome. Stay tuned to ci-journal.net.
1 Thus, since moving to its home at CPCS, the ComTechReview has published articles by Andrew Cohill, Director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village Communications Network Services, part of Virginia Tech University; an analysis of the Atlanta, GA, Family Technology Resource Centers by Paul Baker and Dara O'Neil in the Public Policy Program at Georgia Tech and the related Atlanta Community Technology Initiative by Lynette Kvasny, Ph.D. candidate in Computer Information Systems at Georgia State University; an overview of Computer Professional for Social Responsibility's Public Sphere Project by Doug Schuler, who teaches at Evergreen State College College; an analysis of the Community Information Corps at the University of Michigan School of Information by Paul Resnick who is Associate Professor there; and a perspective on the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act by Allen Hammond, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law - these alone from the first issue in the summer-fall 2001.
Peter Miller is editor of the Community Technology Review and on the review board of the Journal of Community Informatics.
- A pointer and introduction (in part through video) to the work of K-Net, an aboriginal group in Northern Canada which is innovating in the use of ICT for education, for administration, for health, and perhaps most importantly, is demonstrating the way in which ICT truly can enable AND empower communities to move beyond traditional barriers and impediments to find a new and more equitable role in the Information Society.
This brief summary of the tribal collaboration Kuhkenah Network in northwestern Ontario developing broadband services where just a few short years ago there existed only one telephone for every 400 tribal members provides very useful pointers to video introductions which focus on community economic development as well as health and educational contributions that broadband can provide in these rural communities. (kuhkenah is an Oji-Cree term for everyone, everywhere.)
The videos can be seen at <http://streaming.knet.ca/fednor/brian_ beaton3_300k.wmv > and <http://smart.knet.ca/kuhkenah_flash.html >—from the extensions noted here, you need a machine that runs Windows Media Player and Flash, both of which are available for free.
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- A description of an ambitious current research project examining the impacts and outcomes of government support for community technology with an overall objective of providing insight toward the future of such programs and their impact on the larger society.
The Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN) is a collaborative partnership among academic researchers and practitioners in Canada (and elsewhere) and the three principal federal government departments promoting the "Connecting Canadians" agenda to develop publicly accessible Internet services. Central issues include an examination of how the Canadian community-based initiatives contribute to the amelioration of "digital divides"; the enhancement of economic, social, political and cultural capabilities; the creation, provision, and use of community-oriented learning opportunities; and the development of community-oriented cultural content, open source software, learning tools, and broadband infrastructures. For those in the U.S., the effort can be usefully compared with the federal Community Technology Centers (CTC) program in the Department of Education and the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) in the Department of Commerce. One can glean from this, too, Canadian perspectives and practices that are influencing the entire international arena, so the particular Canadian experiments and programs reviewed here, the literature referenced, the seven community projects and case studies (ncluding K-net), and work to come are important resources for practitioners everywhere.
Moreover, the article is especially useful in helping practitioners as well as academicians keep focused on the community-building aspects of "community networking"—the broad term used to cover CTCs and the wide range of nonprofit/nongovernment technology efforts as well as community networks as they are generally understood in the U.S. Repeated reference to "participatory action research" reminds us how research can contribute to helping build the projects being studied by providing research resources and skills directly to practitioners. The broad historical perspective the piece brings to the decades-old movement, originating in the seventies, and an emphasis on how concerns have moved away from "access" per se to considerations of "effective use" are also helpful. Finally, this is all presented in a context of diminishing resources being targeted towards "digital divide" programs in Canada in a way that helps us appreciate that the cutbacks going on in the United States—most recently and dramatically with the defunding of TOP—is not only the policy of a particular regime but is a broader trend in the development of information and communications technologies, something that can help shape and inform digital equity and community development efforts everywhere.
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- A presentation of a most important rural ICT initiative whose current success is transforming large areas of rural India.
The article details the connectivity solutions, business model and "organisation" in place that provides the three-pronged foundation for bringing radical change to rural India.
With an infrastructure of fibre which has been brought to almost every taluka (county town) in the country over the last fifteen years by the state-owned telecommunications provider, BSNL, and low-cost base station technology to serve as hubs for the 300-500 villages with a 30 km radius of each taluka, as the authors conclude, "technology is not a serious issue." (In fact, it's been deployed in Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Tunisia, South Africa, and Singapore.)
In rural villages, where affordability is low, a business model has evolved from the successful spread of urban telephony in the 80's, when operator-assisted telephone booths or PCOs were set up on street corners and manned for 16 hours daily, spreading like mushrooms along with the stream of entrepreneurs to operate them. To spur the development of rural Internet kiosks with a middle tier of local service providers to provide maintenance, connectivity, and technical support, n-logue has been chartered as a rural service provider to provide commercial telephone and Internet connectivity to every village. The article provides additional technology and cost detail as well as reviewing the range of services being developed that respond to rural needs: in communications, education, agriculture and veterinary support, health care, e-governance, and entertainment.
Although the article provides no links, www.n-logue.com provides additional detail along with a map of some three dozen sites that have implemented the model and approach for developing India's 600,000 rural villages with a population of 700,000,000.
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• An analysis and plan for using a major university in a Less Developed Country as a base for a highly innovative program of CI for community transformation.
This overview of plans Cape Peninsula University of Technology has for establishing a research hub in Cape Town is oriented "to create a model Community Informatics post-graduate curriculum suitable for Masters and Ph.D. students, as well as short courses in CI for community practitioners and policy makers...to reflect local needs as understood and articulated by the diverse range of local South African communities as they are given an opportunity to engage with and appropriate ICTs." The presentation shows how the World Summit on the Information Society, the emerging field of Community Informatics, and the international Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN), can help catalyze the development of dynamic programs everywhere.
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- A highly significant analysis of the current state of the art with respect to Telecentre development in Latin America and where it might go from here.
The recent inventory/assessment/evaluation of Somos@Telecentros, the CTCNet of Latin America, that has been synthesized into an analytical panorama of the telecentre movement in the region, prompted by interest in assessment of these programs by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), supported by the Chasquinet Foundation, based in Ecuador, with an action research approach that contributes to the proactive development and strengthening of the network. Analysis includes a description of the network, its organizing principles, membership, discussion lists, the research undertaken in 2000 and 2001, a typology of the telecentres in the region (predominantly supported by governments as opposed to nongovernmental organisations or NGOs and the private sector), a summary of the issues surrounding their sustainability and development, and plans to build a virtual research consortium to help with further research and redevelopment.
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- A fine paper examining the theoretical background to community use of ICT and giving most useful directions for future research as well as community practice towards this end.
This "meta-analysis" of the literature related to "social capital" and ICTs deconstructs, summarizes and looks at the five elements of social capital as they relate to both information and communication technologies and concludes there is not as yet sufficient empirical finding for the claim that ICTs can create community social capital.
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- A most original and insightful critique of current thinking and approaches to ICT for Development.
This brief but pointed critique is aimed at students, researchers, practitioners, and activist ICT non-governmental organizations who are "committed to a rustic, ingenuous 'better connectivity = enhanced democratic culture' strategy," a position which “too often ignores the power of national elites who have configured their regulatory regimes to favor quasi-monopolistic market dominance in cahoots with foreign IT hardware and software interests." See also the author's report "On the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil."
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- A path breaking approach to applying an analysis drawn from the methods and insights of Social Anthropology to ICT design and development as a response to rural poverty.
Based on an in-depth composite picture of "Jose Miguel" and rural life in Latin America, the authors, based in Intel's People and Practices Group, illustrate how an appreciation of actual rural conditions can point to design alternatives that make effective use of ICT more possible in such locales. Limited access to power cords and grid sources of reliable electricity in irregularly heated rooms where dust frequently falls from adobe ceilings are environmental factors contributing to the existence of "digital divides" that connectivity, hardware, and software will not address. The appropriate burden is not primarily on those with limited access but with technology developers who have limited understandings in design for local use. Computers designed to run on different sources of power, for instance—propane, wind, sun, and car batteries as well as electricity—suggest the real meaning of appropriate technology.
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- A brave and insightful analysis of the opportunities and risks that are attendant to ICT in a most important but largely unknown part of the world.
Limited use of ICT in the politically problematic environments of the post-Soviet Commonwealth (CIS) informs the potential role CI can play. Echoing Scott Robinson's analysis, Stafeev warns, given the current governments: "We can, with a high degree of certainty, foresee wide use of sophisticated municipal information systems ... for personal benefit and also for enhancing inequality (of property, information and so on) at the local level."
CI can play a key role in possible constructive development: "Under such conditions the position of the social researcher as an individual citizen becomes most important: rejecting the status of courtier counselors and ideological legitimators of the existing order with the researcher in this instance taking the role of social critic. And here, according to the author's opinion, lies the potentially high value of using the CI approaches in our countries—and principally through the humanitarian, value-dependent direction of these studies." CI provides "a highly effective methodology of alternative (independent) 'interactive monitoring' capable of fixing, measuring and analyzing the technological and socio-cultural factors which appear in the course of ICT programs realization and which usually stay outside the attention focus of the specialists responsible for results estimation." Such a role also requires "collaboration with civil society institutions which are themselves capable not only of impartially criticizing state policy but also of developing strategies and methods for constructive cooperation." See also the author's "Community Networking in Post-Soviet Russia."
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- A document presenting the current "state of play" for a leader in supporting ICT use by women in local communities.
Women Connect - www.womenconnect.org.uk (as opposed to www.womenconnect.org with menu choices involving dating sites, matchmaking resources, and hair loss remedies)—was organized in the UK and successfully funded by the Home Office through the Community Development Foundation because ICT skills have been rated as a third basic life skill after literacy and numeracy and "women are far more likely to be located on the wrong side of the digital divide," Initially providing hardware, software or upgrades, and subsidized online costs, since 2001, Women Connect has concentrated on networking and connecting women online, through local and national gatherings, action planning, a quarterly newsletter, e-discussions, and evaluation.
Women clearly have a central role in policies promoting social inclusion using ICT and e-government, since women are the main users of public services and many of the groups Women Connect currents supports provides frontline public services. National policy context work has focused on government plans to establish a new single "Commission for Equality and Human Rights," a proposed "gender duty" that marks a radically new approach after three decades of legislation that takes on discrimination only after it occurs, and possibilities for the first major overhaul of laws surrounding prostitution in almost 50 years. Women's groups are aware that as more services become available through the web and other ICT tools, older women, the disabled, and women whose first language is not English are at special risk of continued exclusion.
UK policy work is intimately tied to European/regional and international developments through the influence of the UN and international and women's organizations—the UN Convention on the Discrimination of Women which established the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Plaform for Action, and the Women's Networking Support Programme at the Association for Progressive Communication.
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