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Posts categoriezed as community informatics

Article: Social media in remote First Nation communities

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Molyneaux, H., O’Donnell, S., Kakekaspan, C., Walmark, B., Budka, P., Gibson, K. 2014. Social media in remote First Nation communities. Canadian Journal of Communication, 39(2): 275-288.

Abstract

Community resilience in First Nations includes ties to people both inside and outside the community, intergenerational communication, the sharing of stories, and family and community connectedness. This study, based on a survey of Internet users in the Sioux Lookout region of Northwestern Ontario, explores the link between social networking sites and community resilience. The region is home to some of the most isolated First Nation (indigenous)communities in Canada. Cultural and familial links between these communities are strong, yet until recent use of the Internet, maintaining regular communications to strengthen cultural ties was challenging. This study examines the links between travel and communication online, the ways in which social media are used to preserve culture and maintain communication, and the implications of social networking for community resilience.

La résilience communautaire chez les Premières Nations se base sur les rapports à autrui tant au sein de la communauté qu’au-delà de celle-ci, la communication intergénérationnelle, le partage d’histoires et la solidarité familiale et communautaire. Cet article se fonde sur un sondage d’utilisateurs d’Internet dans la région Sioux Lookout du Nord-ouest de l’Ontario pour explorer les rapports entre les sites de réseautage social et la résilience communautaire. La région Sioux Lookout compte certaines des communautés autochtones les plus isolées au Canada. Les affinités culturelles et familiales entre ces communautés sont fortes, et pourtant, avant l’utilisation récente d’Internet, le maintien de communications régulières pour resserrer les liens culturels n’était pas facile. Cette étude examine les rapports entre voyages et communication en ligne, les manières dont on utilise les médias sociaux pour préserver la culture et assurer les communications, et l’impact du réseautage social sur la résilience communautaire.

Paper: Community resilience and social media

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Molyneaux, H., O’Donnell, S., Kakekaspan, C., Walmark, B., Budka, P., Gibson, K. 2012. Community resilience and social media: Remote and rural First Nations communities, social isolation and cultural preservation. Paper for the “2012 International Rural Network Forum”, Whyalla and Upper Spencer Gulf, Australia, 24-28 September.

Abstract
Community resilience in First Nations includes ties to people both inside and outside the community, intergenerational communication, sharing of stories, and family and community connectedness. This study, based on a survey of internet users in the Sioux Lookout region of Northwestern Ontario, explores the link between social networking sites (SNS) and community resilience. The region is home to some of the most isolated and rural First Nations (indigenous) communities in Canada. Cultural and familial links between these communities are strong, yet until the fairly recent widespread use of the internet, maintaining regular communications to strengthen cultural ties was challenging. This study examines the links between travel and communication online, how social media is used to preserve culture and maintain communication, and the implications of social networking for community resilience.

Text (PDF)

Article: “We were on the outside looking in”: MyKnet.org – A First Nations Online Social Environment in Northern Ontario

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Bell, B., Budka, P., Fiser, A. 2012. “We were on the outside looking in”: MyKnet.org – A First Nations online social environment in northern Ontario. In A. Clement, M. Gurstein, G. Longford, M. Moll & L. R. Shade (Eds.), Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics (pp. 237-254). Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.

“In 2000, one of Canada’s leading Aboriginal community networks, the Kuh-ke-nah Network, or K-Net, was on the verge of expanding into broadband services. (For more on K-Net, see chapter 14.) K-Net’s management organization, Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council, had acquired funding and resources to become one of Industry Canada’s Smart Communities demonstration projects. Among the innovative services that K-Net introduced at the time was MyKnet.org, a system of personal home pages intended for remote First Nations users in a region of Northern Ontario where numerous communities have lived without adequate residential telecom service well into the millennium (Fiser, Clement, and Walmark 2006; Ramírez et al. 2003). Shortly thereafter, and through K-Net’s community-based Internet infrastructure, this free-of-charge, free-of-advertising, locally supported, online social environment grew from its core constituency of remote First Nations communities to host over 30,000 registered user accounts (of which approximately 20,000 represent active home pages). …”

free chapter download: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120193

Free e-Book: Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics

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A. Clement, M. Gurstein, G. Longford, M. Moll & L. R. Shade (Eds.), Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.

“Connecting Canadians represents the work of the Community Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), the largest national and international research effort to examine the burgeoning field of community informatics, a cross-disciplinary approach to the mobilization of information and communications technologies (ICT) for community change.

Funded for four years by the SSHRC’s Initiative for the New Economy, CRACIN systematically studied a wide variety of Canadian community ICT initiatives, bringing perspectives from sociology, computer science, critical theory, women’s studies, library and information sciences, and management studies to bear on networking technologies. A comprehensive thematic account of this in-depth research, Connecting Canadians will be an essential resource for NGOs, governments, the private sector, and multilateral agencies across the globe.”

Download the book or single chapters for free: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120193

Vortrag: IKT als Werkzeuge zur Reduktion erzwungener Mobilität

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Vortrag im Rahmen der 7. Tage der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie: “Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) als Werkzeuge zur Reduktion erzwungener Mobilität” (PDF)

Aus dem Inhalt:

  • Indigene in Kanada & im Nordwestlichen Ontario
  • Sitation von First Nations im Nordwestlichen Ontario
  • Indigene IKT im Nordwestlichen Ontario: KO-KNET
  • Reduktion erzwungener Mobilität durch IKT
  • IKT-Anwendungspraktiken: Isolation vs. Sozialität
  • Indigene IKT: Ergebnisse aktueller Studien

Indigene IKT: Ergebnisse aktueller Studien:

  • IKT-Praktiken beeinflussen …
    a) (kulturelle) Identitätskonstruktion & -verhandlung
    b) (soziale) Vergemeinschaftungsformen & -prozesse
    c) Kommunikationspraktiken
  • Entscheidend sind …
    a) Kontrolle von & Bezug zu IKT
    b) Soziokulturelle, geographische & politische Kontexte/Rahmenbedingungen/Möglichkeiten

Article: MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario’s First Nation communities made themselves at home on the World Wide Web

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Budka, P., Bell, B., & Fiser, A. 2009. MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario’s First Nation communities made themselves at home on the World Wide Web. The Journal of Community Informatics, 5(2), Online: http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/568/450

Abstract

In this article we explore the development of MyKnet.org, a loosely structured system of personal homepages that was established by indigenous communities in the region of Northern Ontario, Canada in 2000. Individuals from over 50 remote First Nations across Northern Ontario have made this free of charge, free of advertisements, locally-driven online social environment their virtual home. MyKnet.org currently comprises over 25,000 active homepages and strongly reflects the demographic and geographic profile of Northern Ontario. It is thus youth-based and built around the communities’ need to maintain social ties across great distances. We draw upon encounters with a range of MyKnet.org’s developers and long time users to explore how this community-developed and community-controlled form of communication reflects life in the remote First Nations. Our focus is on the importance of locality: MyKnet.org’s development was contingent on K-Net, a regional indigenous computerization movement to bring broadband communications to remote First Nations. MyKnet.org is explicitly community-driven and not-for-profit, thus playing an important role in inter- and intra-community interaction in a region that has lacked basic telecommunications infrastructure well into the millennium.

Special Issue: CI & Indigenous Communities in Canada—The K-Net Experience

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The Journal of Community Informatics Special Issue: CI & Indigenous Communities in Canada – The K-Net (Keewaytinook Okimakanak’s Kuhkenah Network) Experience

Table of Contents
http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/issue/view/27

Editorial

The K-Net Experience: Thematic Introduction to the Special Issue
Brian Beaton, Susan O’Donnell, Adam Fiser, Brian Walmark

K-Net, Community Informatics and Service Delivery: An Evolving Paradigm
Michael Gurstein

Articles

MyKnet.org: How Northern Ontario’s First Nation Communities Made Themselves At Home On The World Wide Web
Philipp Budka, Brandi Bell, Adam Fiser

How K-Net and Atlantic Canada’s First Nation Help Desk are Using Videoconferencing for Community Development
Mary Milliken, Susan O’Donnell, Elizabeth Gorman

Out from the Edges: Multi-site Videoconferencing as a Public Sphere in First Nations
Fenwick McKelvey, Susan O’Donnell

Representation and Participation of First Nations Women in Online Videos
Sonja Perley

Implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Aboriginal Communities: A Social Capital Perspective
Javier Mignone, Heather Henley

Case Studies

Managing Changes in First Nations’ Health Care Needs: Is Telehealth the Answer?
Josée Gabrielle Lavoie, Donna Williams

Notes from the field

In Search of Community Champions: Researching the Outcomes of K-Net’s Youth Information and Communications Technology Training Initiative
Kristy Tomkinson

A Community Informatics Model for e-Services in First Nations Communities: The K-Net Approach to Water Treatment in Northern Ontario
Michael Gurstein, Brian Beaton, Kevin Sherlock

Reports

Enabling and Accelerating First Nations Telehealth Development in Canada
Valerie Gideon, Eugene Nicholas, John Rowlandson, Florence Woolner

ON-LINE RESOURCES about Keewaytinook Okimakanak, the Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) and Associated Broadband Applications
Brian Beaton

Community Informatics (CI) in Vienna

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Michael Gurstein held a lecture yesterday about “what is community informatics and why does it matter?” at the Austrian Computer Society in Vienna.

Gurstein states that one of the important aspects of CI is to bring researchers, practitioners, and policy makers together to work within a processual structure.

CI aims to solve real live problems of communities by integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) in different community processes. Thus, the community becomes the “user” of ICT and not the individual. This bottom-up approach should ideally lead to the empowerment of the community through ICT.

In contrary to the concept of the “digital divide”, CI is about “effective use of ICT” and not about access to ICT. Within the context of CI, ICT is to enable people to e.g. decentralize institutions or distribute local knowledge. A good example of such a decentralized institution is the Keewaytinook Internet High School (KIHS) of the KO Tribal Council in Northwestern Ontario, which enables First Nations’ students to stay in their remote communities while attending school.

Jana Herwig wrote a nice report in German about Gurstein’s lecture and the follow-up discussion for her blog.

Michael Gurstein in Vienna

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One of the founders of community informatics, Michael Gurstein, visits Vienna to introduce this new disciplin to an audience at the Austrian Computer Society. The event is co-organized by the Graduate Students’ Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna.

frome the Wikipedia:

Community informatics (CI) refers to an emerging set of principles and practices concerned with the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for the personal, social, cultural or economic development of and within communities. CI as an academic discipline (and as a practice) is often located within Information Systems presented however, in conjunction with community development and other social academic and practice areas. It can be considered as a cross or interdisciplinary approach utilising ICTs for different forms of community action.
(…)

for more information see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gurstein
http://www.ciresearch.net
http://ci-journal.net
http://www.communityinformatics.net

Montreal und CRACIN Workshop

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Montreal, eine multikulturelle und bilinguale Stadt, die ihren Namen dem Berg (Mont Royal) im Herzen der Stadt zu verdanken hat, ist vielleicht die europäischste aller nordamerikanischen Metropolen. Cafés, Pubs mit Gastgärten, Mode- und Schmuckgeschäfte sowie südeuropäische Restaurants und Bars sorgen für den unvergleichlichen Charme für den die zweitgrößte französischsprachige Stadt der westlichen Hemisphäre nach Paris, nicht nur in Kanada, berühmt ist.

Ich hatte nun das Vergnügen in dieser einzigartigen Stadt an dem fünften und gleichzeitig auch letzten Workshop der Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN) teilzunehmen, der an der Concordia University veranstaltet wurde. Das Projekt CRACIN bringt seit 2003 Community Partner und Regierungsvertreter mit Wissenschaftlern und Forschern zusammen, um gemeinsam die Fortschritte und Ergebnisse ausgewählter kanadischer Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie Initiativen zu untersuchen. K-Net ist etwa einer dieser Community Partner.

Als Außenstehender fand ich die unterschiedlichen Formen der Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Partnern, die nicht notwendiger Weise immer die gleichen Ziele verfolgen, als besonders beeindruckend.

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