Brian D. Loader Director, Community Informatics Research & Applications Unit University of Teesside, UK http://www.cira.org.uk
A paper for Community and Information Technology: the Big Questions. 16 October, 2002 Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Interest in what we describe as Community informatics - the adoption and study of how new information and communications technologies (ICTs) can facilitate the social, economic, political and cultural development of communities- has been greatly accelerated as a consequence of the greater diffusion of the Internet and its revolutionary potential for influencing all areas of social life (Keeble & Loader 2001; Gurstein 2000). Much of the early discussion in this emerging field was very optimistic in tone, suggesting that the intrinsic qualities of the new media would somehow naturally foster stronger social relationships and stimulate community regeneration.(Rheingold, 1994, Schuler 1994). Throughout the world, social experiments in community informatics and community networking flourished on this wave of euphoria for the transforming capacity of the communications technologies to challenge the social malaise seemingly enveloping societies in the late twentieth century. As these voluntary, commercial and state sponsored initiatives have begun to provide us with experiences and lessons voiced by those involved, however, it is perhaps time to undertake a more cautious and reflexive view of the role of ICTs in community development.
In particular I would like to suggest that the relationship between the new media and community development is an ambiguous one which is shaped primarily through a complex interaction of social, political, commercial and political factors which can, and frequently do, produce a mixture of intended and unintended outcomes for their participants. A clearer understanding therefore of these environmental forces and interests is a necessary first step to both assessing the potential value of ICTs for community development and also providing more effective guidance for meeting programme objectives. In this presentation I will attempt to support this perspective by reference to a few selected examples of ambiguity.
The British journalist Polly Toynbee is fond of pointing out that the term community is most often invoked as a tool of social amelioration when applied to places where poor people live or areas in need of 'social regeneration'. Why is it, she asks, that the term is seldom used to describe wealthier middle class social relations? Looking at the rhetoric of community informatics one is certainly struck by the fact that these initiatives do indeed seem to take place primarily in disadvantaged localities. In our own work in the North East of England our action research projects have taken place primarily, although not exclusively, in neighbourhoods and areas characterised by a high incidence of social and economic deprivation (http://www.cira.org). So what do we make of this characteristic of community informatics? What does it tell us about the nature of these projects? Don't wealthy social groups constitute communities? Don't the middle classes need the same social benefits ascribed to community life?
The answer to this conundrum, of course, rather depends on what you mean by community in the first instant. Because it is here that our first ambiguity arises. The term community means different things to different people despite the fact that we all seem to use the term as if in common agreement. In one sense it is imbued with the aura of companionship and human warmth which derives from its linguistically related concept of communication. Consequently any technologies which foster more and perhaps better communications between people contributes to a greater sense of community. Often the term is also associated with communication and social support between people who share a common geographical location. This perspective is particularly strong in the UK sociological literature of the past which focussed upon close knit working class communities in the East End of London, rural areas or those associated with particular industries such as coal mining. But more recently it has also been invoked as a measure of the 'breakdown' of communities at the end of the millennium.
Robert Putnam's hugely influential book Bowling Alone(2000) is perhaps the most popular example of the claim that community life in the USA is waning and that the social consequences are poorer health and psychological well-being, declining business opportunities and wealth creation, democratic inertia and political apathy, as well as falling educational standards. Ironically, Putnam points to an earlier communications technology - television- as the main culprit for this weakening of community ties. But the message is clear. Social regeneration depends upon re-building community life. Informatics, the social adoption of ICTs, is regarded as a powerful set of tools with which to re-connect people and engage them in social relationships. Through community technology centers (in all their different guises such as telehouses, electronic village halls, Telecottages or even cybercafés) where local people could meet and undertake computer courses, the provision of community hosts and servers, and the development of community websites, the new media has become indispensable to community development in the information society.
In our own community informatics work in the UK we have facilitated many electronic or wired communities including Trimdon Digital Village (www.trimdon.co.uk), and a network of communities as a part of Tees Valley Communities Online (www.tvco.co.uk). And it is in part from the experiences and lessons drawn from the evaluation of such projects that the ambiguity and competing notions of community can be seen as crucial to the perceived success or otherwise of these initiatives. In particular it is important to understand why community has come to be seen as so important for politicians and policy makers (Putnam for example was invited to 10 Downing Street to meet PM Blair and give a seminar on the relevance of his work for New Labour policies) who are, either directly or indirectly, the main sponsors for community informatics projects, at least in Europe.
Two main factors can be identified which explain the importance attributed to community informatics for European policy makers. First, is the economic imperative that those communities which are not appropriately aware, skilled and provisioned for the emerging information society will fall behind in the race to secure wealth generation. Here the notion of community is bound up with computer training and literacy and competition to attract inward investment. Thus funding regimes (at least in the UK) are conditional upon numbers of people trained through accredited courses and targets for jobs created. Moreover, most of the European Structural Funds are directed to Polly Toynbee's post-industrial working class communities which helps foster the image of solidarity amongst the poor.
The second appeal of such community informatics programmes to policy makers relates to the phenomenon of what I have described elsewhere as a trend towards welfare direct (Loader 1998). This refers to the adoption of ICTs by governments to enable the responsibility for citizen welfare to pass from the liberal democratic welfare state to the individual. In a situation where citizens are increasingly less likely to vote for political parties advocating higher taxation to pay for expanding welfare services, where demands upon the welfare state grow inexorably, and where the privatisation of the public sphere has become commonplace, governments are enthusiastic about the prospect of citizens using the technologies to manage their own risk assessments. In this context, community, together with the family, becomes central to a social policy which emphasises self-help, social support and community care. Again such a contention seems to have more resonance for poorer communities where the costs of welfare are transferred from state to community members, friends and neighbours.
What I am suggesting here is that enthusiasts for community informatics initiatives need to be clear at the outset of the ambiguous and competing notions of community and how these perspectives may place demands upon community groups of which they should be aware. But it is not just political and commercial forces and their related conditions which influence community development. The optimistic notion of community life as an embodiment of the ideal way to live may not itself even be desirable. Whilst many champion the positive benefits of strong communities far fewer it seems express concerns over how community can act as a means of domination. For many women, for example, community may be the place where they are trapped and already overburdened with the roles of primary carer and social supporter. Moreover, communities can be characterised as one dimensional and intolerant of differences and diversity. In this context the Internet may be the source of escape from a geographical community and liberation in a virtual community of people sharing similar interests.
Thus the new ICTs can be agents of empowerment for community groups and members but also the means of their subjugation. Community can be a means of social control as well as a well spring for social capital. Community activists and development workers need to be aware of this ambiguity in their negotiations and deliberations with community members, public institutions, sponsors and the like. As importantly, they should not, in my opinion, be so readily convinced of the demise of social relations. It is equally possible that we are not witnessing the 'breakdown' of community so much as the transformation of community structures which may well be facilitated by the new media. Barry Wellman, for example, has been extolling us for some time to discard geographical notions of community and replace them with the idea of social networks. If we look at communities as networks of relationships our picture of weakening social ties is replaced by a view of strong and weak friendships flourishing both within localities but also between and across boundaries. People have a much richer set of relationships than simply those associated with neighbourhoods. In the age of the Internet it may be that community informatics is more important for stimulating and supporting cross boundary relationships than for recreating a model of community which may be flawed and may not have ever existed in its ideal form in the first place. It may be characterised by the idea that community informatics is more concerned with creating spaces than maintaining places.
The trajectory of community informatics projects is also significantly influenced by the ambiguity of the technology itself. Here I refer to the competing notions of how the technology works its magic and achieves its objectives. On the one hand is the camp of techno enthusiasts who believe that the empowering capabilities inherent in the ICTs will enrich people's lives as soon as they come into contact with it. They point to the global reach of the Internet available 24 hours a day, containing unimaginable amounts of information, enabling people anywhere to communicate and share resources, to the commercial opportunities and its potential for enhancing democratic deliberation. For them all we need to do is show people the potential of the media, train them in computer skills and provide them with access to the Internet and the Information Age is born.
The alternative view, sometimes known as the social shaping of technology perspective, is that the technology is of secondary importance to the social, political, economic or cultural objectives of a programme. Technology, this group claims, is not value neutral. It is designed by humans and does not exist in some parallel universe. Thus the adoption of ICTs is heavily influenced by the intentions of the designers, the perceptions and expectations of the users and the unintended uses which emerge over time. Again, this ambiguity is very important for community informatics practitioners to understand. In my opinion far too many projects are technologically led and flounder because of a mismatch between the communication needs and social structures of community networks and the presumed perspective of the techno enthusiasts. In many instances these groups simply don't even speak the same language let along share a common vision. Moreover, since the technology is shaped by social circumstances it is more important that community groups are involved in that process if they are to 'own' and drive the initiative for themselves. Yet this 'bottom up' or grassroots approach may be at variance with the 'top down' policies discussed above which emphasise computer literacy targets, jobs created and inward investment.
The third ambiguity I want to raise is one which emerges from how we define the digital divide. This refers, of course, to the social cleavage between the information rich and the information poor within countries (I will not deal here with the more significant digital divide between countries). Consistent with the top down policy models discussed above, the emphasis for many community informatics projects has tended to be placed upon the necessity of providing access to the technology for all citizens. In the UK, for example, the current administration has pledged to provide access to the Internet to all its citizens through a national network of UK Online centres. Many of these were existing community informatics initiatives and the New Opportunities Fund provided financial assistance for new start up projects.
This approach then is consistent with the idea of providing training and access for community regeneration by placing the technologies in community technology centres. As such, however, it fails to take account of the ambiguities identified above or to the related one of defining the digital divide. Access may be important but it is not the only factor, or even the most important one, influencing the adoption of the Internet by disadvantaged groups. Whilst the new media may be attractive to middle class users already highly literate, well educated, and keen to exploit the interactive potential of the media in their information and communication rich lives, such qualifications may act as significant barriers to take up by the socially excluded. Interactivity requires a self confidence which is more important than technological ability as well as a relevance to the communication needs of the users life experience. It is scarcely surprising perhaps that the anecdotal picture which is emerging in the UK is of large numbers of grossly underused Online centres packed with state of the art digital equipment and providing formal training which is regarded as irrelevant to the needs of their intended users.
It is a policy equivalent to giving the illiterate copies of Shakespeare's Complete Works, teaching them to read and expecting them to gain enjoyment and insight into their lives through a process of untutored osmosis. For community informatics projects to be empowering they must be socially contextualised. Simply showering communities with technology will not address the digital divide. Such communities may become wired but their use may be very different from that of the information rich. Video on demand, shopping over the Internet or online gaming may be evidence of access (and one consistent with welfare direct models) but it hardly constitutes empowerment through interaction. Community informatics projects intended to bridge the digital divide need to address this ambiguity of access and empowerment in their design and practice.
The final ambiguity considered is that between the need for innovation and the need for sustainability. One the one hand many community informatics projects are supported as innovative social experiments designed to shape the new media for diverse community objectives and supporting virtual spaces and networks. On the other hand communities may need projects to be sustained for longer periods than short term experiments. Historically, however, it is possible to discern life cycles of such projects whereby innovation is replaced either by extinction or colonisation by public or commercial interests. Notable examples include 'Community Memory', and PEN in the USA but the field is littered with past experiments. In one sense this may be regarded as simply the role of community informatics initiatives. Large media companies are becoming aware of the value of 'local' news and information and are often more effective at providing attractive, accessible and reliable platforms than the original community informatics project. But it also runs the risk of disempowering community groups by taking away their ownership of the content. Thus community activists need also be aware of this ambiguity and negotiate appropriate exit or sustainability strategies as a part of the original design.
Community informatics projects around the world continue to provide innovative impressive and creative uses of the new ICTs for fostering a diverse range of social networks. A recent search audit of published material documenting such initiatives undertaken by CIRA bears testament to the continuing interest in community informatics as a policy instrument. But as attempts to empower citizens and stimulate social capital their success depends upon a critical understanding of the ambiguities present in the social, cultural, commercial and political circumstances shaping their design and implementation. Only through a clearer understanding of often competing objectives can policy choices be made by the community members most directly affected. The choices between policies which emphasise empowerment and those which engender domination; between those which enable sustainable community development and those which result in consumerism; and, between those that perceive the digital divide as socially structured and those which would electronically reinforce existing social divisions. Such debates and deliberations should be central to the community informatics movements and thereby inform the design and development of future projects.
Brian D. LoaderLoader, B.D. (1998) 'Welfare Direct: the emergence of a self-service welfare state?' in J Carter (ed.) Postmodernity and the Fragmentation of Welfare. London: Routledge
Loader, B.D. (ed.)(1998) The Cyberspace Divide:Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society, London: Routledge
Keeble, L., & Loader, B. D. (2001) Community Informatics: Shaping Computer-Mediated Social Networks, London:Routledge
Putnam, R (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse of Revival of American Community, New York:Siman & Schuster
Rheingold, H (1994) The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerised World, London:Secker & Warburg
Schuler, D (1994) The New Community Networks: Wired for Change, Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley
Wellman, B (1999) 'The Network Community', in Wellman, B. (ed) Networks in the Global Village, Boulder,CO: Westview.