Community informatics

Building a Research Group

Published in Alethea Blackler, Evonne Miller, How to Be a Design Academic, 2021

During my PhD, I was part of the Community Informatics Researchers Network (CIRN), which was founded in 2003 primarily by colleagues at Monash University on the basis of Michael Gurstein’s work (Gurstein, 2000). Informatics, with its implied reference to information systems and information studies, slightly shifts the attention away from the hardware and more towards the socio-cultural aspects of information exchange, communication and interaction, social networks and human knowledge. Gurstein described community informatics as being primarily concerned with improving the wellbeing of people and their communities through more effective use of information and communication technology. Likewise, Urban Informatics – in my original conception – is concerned with the impact of technology, systems and infrastructure on people in urban environments.

Book review essay on Nell Haynes, Social Media in Northern Chile and Juliano Spyer, Social Media in Emergent Brazil

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Journal Information

Published in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 2020

Andrea Alarcon

For example, literature from Information Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), community informatics, mobile media, information studies, digital divide or inequality (Hargittai 2002), the study of social media in social movements and even area studies, has touched on themes running through the series, but they are not necessarily acknowledged in the books. The choice to leave out this particular literature is noted (Miller et al. 2016, 231), as they make an argument for not including social media within a historical approach of the internet.

Community informatics

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Building a Research Group

Book review essay on Nell Haynes, Social Media in Northern Chile and Juliano Spyer, Social Media in Emergent Brazil