Here is a fantastic video, produced by Carson and Jessikha Block, that provides an overview of our Measuring Library Broadband Networks (MLBN) project. It’s a wonderful description of our research, which is funded by a two-year grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (award #LG-71-18-0110-18). to learn more about our research, please visit our project website at http://slis.simmons.edu/blogs/mlbn/
New Encyclopedia Entries
Since transitioning from being a community media and technology practitioner in the late 2000s to a community informatics scholar during the past decade, I have sought to both highlight and contribute to the existing community media and informatics scholarship during this time. As part of this work, I am excited to announce that I have new contributions on both topics in two encyclopedias. The first contribution on Community Media was published earlier this year in the The International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy edited by Renee Hobbs and Paul Mihailidis.
Here is the abstract:
“Media literacy scholars have identified five essential competencies that support digital and media literacy: these are the abilities to access, analyze, create, reflect, and act (Hobbs, 2011). While these core competencies are often advanced through community media practice, few studies have made explicit connections between media literacy education and the community media sector. Presented here is an overview of the ways in which community media support these essential competencies; attention will be paid to community media’s role in promoting access, participation, diversity, and empowerment as key drivers of media literacy education. This entry highlights youth media as a form of media literacy education within the community media sector. It includes a discussion of the social, cultural, and political contexts that are critical to understanding how community media support fundamental media literacy goals.”
The second contribution on Community Informatics was just published in the 2nd edition of The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology edited by George Ritzer and Chris Rojek. This short entry provides a concise overview of the field including its origins and more recent developments, including across both physical and virtual spaces where community informatics researchers and practitioners have convened over the past 20 years. I am honored to have been invited to contribute on both topics as they have been core to my own research and practice for many years.
JoCI Editor-In-Chief in 2020
I will be writing more about this in the days (and years) ahead, but I wanted to share the news that I will be the new Editor-In-Chief of The Journal of Community Informatics starting in February 2020. Eduardo Villanueva, the journal’s current Editor-In-Chief made the announcement yesterday on the last day of the CIRN 2019 conference. Here’s the tweet below from Aldo de Moor announcing the news yesterday.
New Course: “Intersectionality, Technology and the Information Professions”
I am excited to announce that we are offering a new course, titled “Intersectionality, Technology and the Information Professions” (LIS 532P) at Simmons SLIS in spring 2020. The course, which I helped to develop with my colleague Danielle Pollock builds on Danielle’s work teaching “Race, Gender, and Information Technology” at the University of Tennessee and some of the perspectives I had incorporated in my Social Informatics course last year. We are also collaborating with our SLIS colleague Rebecca Davis to finalize the syllabus, course readings, and assignments for next semester.
Here’s the course description from our website:
“This course focuses on how race, gender, and other intersecting social identities, such as sexuality, social class, and ability, impact and are impacted by people’s interactions with information, technology, and the information professions. The contexts include culture, inclusion, and equity within: information professions; information technologies and services; classification and information organization; and information environments, including virtual environments. Students will gain a deeper understanding of critical perspectives on expressions of identity, disparate impact on use and users of technology, digital equity, and implications for professional practice.”
2019 Ernest A. Lynton Award Finalist
I am incredibly honored to share the news that I was selected as a finalist for this year’s Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty. Santamaría Graff, Assistant Professor of Urban Teacher Education at IUPUI was this year’s recipient, which was jointly awarded by Campus Compact and Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service.
As the Swearer Center’s website explains,
“The Lynton Award emphasizes community-engaged scholarly work across faculty roles. The scholarship of engagement represents an integrated view of faculty roles in which teaching, research/creative activity and service overlap and are mutually reinforcing, is characterized by scholarly work tied to a faculty member’s academic expertise, is of benefit to the external community, is visible and shared with community stakeholders and reflects the mission of the institution.”
The press release also explained that “the recipients of the 2019 Lynton and Ehrlich Awards will be recognized at Campus Compact’s Compact20 national conference, which will be held in Seattle, WA from March 29 to April 1, 2020.”
