Category Archives: Uncategorized

The new issue of the Journal of Community Informatics was just published. The special issue features eight research articles and three “notes from the field” that examine Research Methods for Community Informatics. The issue features an exciting range of insights that should be useful to researchers and practitioners alike.

This was my first experience co-editing a journal issue, and I learned a great deal in the process. This was due in large part to my experience working with my excellent co-editors, Andy Bytheway in South Africa and Mark Wolfe in Canada. They were wonderful to work with on this project.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues who played such an important role over the past year either contributing an article, reviewing an article, or providing me with social and technical support. I am proud of this special issue with its breadth of perspectives and contributions to the field of CI research and practice.

Enjoy!

My colleague, Martin Wolske and I recently completed our paper for the 2014 Prato Community Informatics Research Network conference proceedings. A preprint of the paper is now available via the ShareOK open-access research repository at the University of Oklahoma.  In the paper, we introduce a Critical Interpretive Sociotechnical (CIS) framework, which describes our underlying approach to community informatics teaching, research, and practice with individuals and groups in local communities.

Here is the abstract:

This paper extends the theoretical framework underlying the Community Informatics (CI) Studio. The CI Studio has been described as the use of studio-based learning (SBL) techniques to support enculturation into the field of CI. The SBL approach, closely related to John Dewey’s inquiry-based learning, is rooted in the apprenticeship model of learning in which students study with master designers or artists to develop their craft. In this paper, we introduce our critical interpretive sociotechnical (CIS) framework as the conceptual framework underlying the CI Studio course and pedagogy. In doing so, we explain how the CI Studio can be understood a pathway for advancing community-defined social justice goals through critical pedagogy and participatory design techniques. We describe our embrace of both critical and interpretive perspectives as the foundation upon which the CI Studio supports the following ideas: Instructors, students, and community partners can collaborate as co-learners and co-creators of knowledge exploring current topics in community informatics; theory and praxis can be brought together in dialog to ground transformative, liberative action and reflection in community spaces; and multiple perspectives can be embraced to promote a culture of epistemological pluralism. We conclude by providing a set of principles that summarize our CIS approach, particularly for those who wish to use and further develop the CI Studio pedagogy in their own research, teaching, and practice.

Download the full PDF via the ShareOK website here.

Rebecca MacKinnon, project lead for Ranking Digital Rights, co-founder of Global Voices and senior research fellow for New American Foundation, is speaking this Wednesday, November 12th at 7:30pm in the David L. Boren Auditorum, here at the University of Oklahoma.  I have the great honor of introducing Rebecca and moderating the Q & A during the event on Wednesday.  The event is free and open to the public. For more details, see flyer below.

My dissertation, entitled “The Social Shaping of Cloud Computing: An Ethnography of Infrastructure in East St. Louis, Illinois” is now available online via the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS). My committee members included: Christian Sandvig (advisor), Linda C. Smith, Dan Schiller, and Rayvon Fouché.

Here is the abstract:

This study investigates the infrastructural tensions that shaped a cloud computing software implementation within a community-based organization in East St. Louis, Illinois. A community-based organization provides nonprofit social welfare services to low-income residents within a specific geographic location. In East St. Louis, 100 percent of the local school children are eligible for the free and reduced-price meal program, which is a common measure of poverty. Previous studies have focused on the impact of computerization on social workers and welfare organizations. This research instead uses a “social shaping of technology” perspective to analyze the ways in which broader social, institutional, and technical factors shape information infrastructure and its consequences. This eleven-month ethnographic study provides an account of the everyday technology experiences of social workers, managers, and directors in a community-based organization as they used cloud computing services at work.

Three major findings emerged from the study: (1) The tensions between external stakeholder demands and internal organizational needs influenced decisions about how the cloud computing software was configured and implemented; (2) the lack of interoperability between state-mandated and for-profit cloud computing systems, at times, exacerbated these tensions; and (3) the agency of a diverse and resilient group of human services professionals played a significant role in shaping the cloud computing software implementation. In presenting this sociotechnical analysis of information infrastructure, informed by critical perspectives at the intersection of race, gender, class, and technology, this research makes a contribution to the field of library and information science by describing how networked information systems can fail to meet the needs of community-based organizations that provide state-funded public assistance programs. I argue that in order to develop successful information infrastructures in human services organizations, cloud computing software platforms need to be flexible enough to both provide accountability to funders and meet the needs of community-based organizations.

My name is Colin Rhinesmith. I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Oklahoma. My research and teaching interests are focused within the areas of social and community informatics.

My interests also include infrastructure studies, telecommunications and information policy, and ethnography of information and communication technology. I am particularly interested in understanding the ways in which individuals and groups use information and communication technology in support of community-defined development goals.

I received my Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I received my B.A. and M.A. in Media Studies from Emerson College in Boston, MA. Thank you for stopping by.