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Community Informatics
Genuineness in Art is the distinctive routes in which a gem or a masterful execution might be
viewed as valid. Denis Dutton recognizes ostensible genuineness and expressive credibility. The
primary alludes to the right recognizable proof of the creator of a gem, to how intently an
execution of a play or bit of music complies with the creator's aim, or to how intently a gem fits
in with an aesthetic custom. The second sense alludes to how much the work has unique or
characteristic power, the amount of earnestness, validity of expression, and good enthusiasm the
craftsman or entertainer puts into the work.
A very diverse concern is the genuineness of the experience, which might be difficult to
accomplish. A current guest to a historical center may not just see an item in an altogether
different setting from that which the craftsman expected, yet might be not able comprehend
critical parts of the work. The legitimate experience might be difficult to recover.
Background
Most humans live in communities. In some urban areas, community and neighborhood are
conflated but this may be a limited definition. Communities are defined as people coming
together in pursuit of common aims or shared practices through any means, including physical,
electronic, and social networks .. They proliferate even while the ability to define them is
amorphous.
Cultures ensure their growth and survival by continuing the norms and mores that are the bases
of their way of life. Communities can use the infrastructure of ICTs as a method of continuing
cultures within the context of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Once a cultural identity is
defined within the context of these technologies, it can be replicated and disseminated through
various means, including the sharing of information through websites, applications, databases,
and file sharing. In this manner, a group that defines its cultural identity within the construct of
technology infrastructure is empowered to hold valuable exchanges within the spheres of
economics, political power, high and popular culture, education, and entertainment.
Since the inception of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we have seen the exponential
growth of enterprises ranging from electronic commerce, social networking, entertainment and
education, as well as a myriad of other contrivances and file exchanges that allow for an ongoing
cultural enrichment through technology. However, there has been a general lag as to which
populations can benefit through these services through impediments such as geographic location,
a lack of funds, gaps in technology and the expertise and skills that are required to operate these
systems.
To date there has been very considerable investment in supporting the electronic development of
business communities, one-to-many social tools (for example, corporate intranets, or purposebuilt exchange and social networking services such as eBay, or Myspace), or in developing
applications for individual use. There is far less understanding, or investment in human-technical
networks and processes that are intended to deliberately result in social change or community
change, particularly in communities for whom electronic communication is secondary to having
an adequate income or social survival.
The communal dimension (and focus of Community Informatics) results in a strong interest in
studying and developing strategies for how ICTs can enable and empower those living in
physical communities. This is particularly the case in those communities where ICT access is
done communally, through Telecentres, information kiosks, community multimedia centres, and
other technologies. This latter set of approaches has become of very considerable interest as
Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) has emerged as
significant element in strategic (and funding) approaches to social and economic development in
Less Developed Countries. ICT4D initiatives have been undertaken by public, NGO and private
sector agencies concerned with development such as the United Nations Development Program,
the World Bank, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the MS
Swaminathan Research Foundation; have emerged as a key element in the poverty alleviation
component of the UN's Millennium Development Goals; and as important directions for private
sector investment both from a market perspective (cf. the "Bottom of the Pyramid") and from
companies concerned with finding a delivery channel for goods and services into rural and low
income communities.
There is thus growing interest in Community Informatics as an approach to understanding of
how different ICTs can enable and empower marginalized communities to achieve their
collective goals.
Conceptual approaches
As an academic discipline, CI can be seen as a field of practice in applied information and
communications technology. Community informatics is a technique for looking at economic and
social development within the construct of technology – online health communities, social
networking websites, cultural awareness and enhancement through online connections and
networks, electronic commerce, information exchanges, as well as a myriad of other aspects that
contributes to creating a personal and group identity. The term was brought to prominence by
Michael Gurstein. Michael Gurstein says that community informatics is a technology strategy or
discipline that connects at the community level economic and social development with the
emergence of community and civic networks, electronic commerce, online participation, selfhelp, virtual health communities, “Tele-centres,” as well as other types of online institutions and
corporations. He brought out the first representative collection of academic papers, although
others, such as Brian Loader and his colleagues at the University of Teesside used the term in the
mid-1990s.
CI brings together the practices of community development and organization, and insights from
fields such as sociology, planning, computer science, critical theory, women's studies, library and
information sciences, management information systems, and management studies. Its outcomes
— community networks and community-based ICT-enabled service applications — are of
increasing interest to grassroots organizations, NGOs and civil society, governments, the private
sector, and multilateral agencies among others. Self-organized community initiatives of all
varieties, from different countries, are concerned with ways to harness ICT for social capital,
poverty alleviation and for the empowerment of the "local" in relation to its larger economic,
political and social environments. Some claim it is potentially a form of 'radical practice'
Community Informatics may in fact, not gel as a single field within the academy, 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. However, one can
begin to see the emergence of a postmodern "trans-discipline" presenting a challenge to existing
disciplinary "stove-pipes" from the perspectives of the rapidly evolving fields of technology
practice, technology change, public policy and commercial interest. Whether or not such a
"trans-discipline" can maintain its momentum remains to be seen given the incertitude about the
boundaries of such disciplines as community development.
Furthermore, there is a continuing disconnect between those coming from an Information
Science perspective for whom social theories, including general theories of organisation are
unfamiliar or seemingly irrelevant to solving complex 'technical' problems, and those whose
focus is upon the theoretical and practical issues around working with communities for
democratic and social change
Given that many of those most actively involved in early efforts were academics, it is only
inevitable that a process of "sense-making" with respect to these efforts would follow from "toolmaking" efforts. These academics, and some community activists connected globally through the
medium.
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 community-based ICT initiatives in
developed countries with initiatives undertaken in developing countries, which were often 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.
Academics and researchers interested in ICT efforts in developed countries began to see
common and overlapping interests with those interested in similar work in less developed
countries. For example, the issue of sustainability as a technical, cultural, and economic problem
for community informatics has resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Community
Informatics as well as the subject of ongoing conferences in Prato, Italy and other conferences in
South Africa.
Social informatics beyond an immediate concern for a community
Social Informatics refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of
computerization – including the roles of information technology in social and organizational
change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social
organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices.
Historically, social informatics research has been strong in the Scandinavian countries, the UK
and Northern Europe. Within North America, the field is represented largely through
independent research efforts at a number of diverse institutions. Social informatics research
diverges from earlier, deterministic (both social and technological) models for measuring the
social impacts of technology. Such technological deterministic models characterized information
technologies as tools to be installed and used with a pre-determined set of impacts on society
dictated by the technology’s stated capabilities. Similarly, the socially deterministic theory
represented by some proponents of the social construction of technology (SCOT) or social
shaping of technology theory see technology as the product of human social forces.
Criticisms
There is a 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
organizing and community based research. In addition, the difficulty that Information Systems
has in recognising the qualitative dimension of technology research means that the kind of
approach taken by supporters of community informatics is difficult to justify to a positive field
oriented towards solutions of technical, rather than social problems. This is a difficulty also seen
in the relationship between strict technology research and management research. Problems in
conceptualising and evaluating complex social interventions relying on a technical base are
familiar from community health and community education. There are long-standing debates
about the desire for accountable - especially quantifiable and outcome-focused social
development, typically practised by government or supported by foundations, and the more
participatory, qualitatively 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), and 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, both in developed and developing countries. The
ethics of technology intervention in indigenous or other communities has not been sufficiently
explored, even though ICTs are increasingly looked upon as an important tool for social and
economic development in such communities. Moreover, neither explicit theoretical positions nor
ideological positioning has yet emerged. Many projects appear to have developed with no
particular disciplinary affiliation, arising more directly from policy or practice imperatives to 'do
something' with technology as funding opportunities arise or as those at the grassroots (or
working with the grassroots) identify ICT as possible resources to respond to local issues,
problems or opportunities. The papers and documented outcomes (as questions or issues for
further research or elaboration) on the wiki of the October 2006 Prato conference demonstrate
that many of the social, rather than technical issues are key questions of concern to any
practitioner in community settings: how to bring about change; the nature of authentic or
manufactured community; ethical frameworks; or the politics of community research.
A different strain of critique has emerged from gender studies. Some theorists have argued that
feminist contributions to the field have yet to be fully acknowledged and Community Informatics
as a research area has yet to welcome feminist interventions. This exists despite the presence of
several gender-oriented studies and leadership roles played by women in community informatics
initiatives.
Networks
There are emerging online and personal networks of researchers and practitioners in community
informatics and community networking in many countries 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 on-line Journal of Community Informatics.
It is surprising in fact, how much in common is found when people from developed and nondeveloped 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 that is
frequently raised amongst participants at events such as the Prato conferences is that a focus on
technical solutions evades the social changes that communities need to achieve in their values,
activities and other people-oriented outcomes in order to make better use of technology.
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.
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