Қоғамдық ақпараттандыру: Технологиялар мен қауымдастық дамуы

Community informatics (CI) is an interdisciplinary field that is concerned with using information and communication technology (ICT) to empower members of communities and support their social, cultural, and economic development.

Most humans live in communities. In some urban areas, community and neighborhood are conflated but this may be a limited definition. Communities are defined as people coming together in pursuit of common aims or shared practices through any means, including physical, electronic, and social networks. They proliferate even while the ability to define them is amorphous. Cultures ensure their growth and survival by continuing the norms and mores that are the bases of their way of life. Communities can use the infrastructure of ICTs as a method of continuing cultures within the context of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Once a cultural identity is defined within the context of these technologies, it can be replicated and disseminated through various means, including the sharing of information through websites, applications, databases, and file sharing. In this manner, a group that defines its cultural identity within the construct of technology infrastructure is empowered to hold valuable exchanges within the spheres of economics, political power, high and popular culture, education, and entertainment. Since the inception of the Internet and the World Wide Web, we have seen the exponential growth of enterprises ranging from electronic commerce, social networking, entertainment and education, as well as a myriad of other contrivances and file exchanges that allow for an ongoing cultural enrichment through technology. However, there has been a general lag as to which populations can benefit through these services through impediments such as geographic location, a lack of funds, gaps in technology and the expertise and skills that are required to operate these systems. To date there has been very considerable investment in supporting the electronic development of business communities, one to many social tools (for example, corporate intranets, or purpose built exchange and social networking services such as eBay, or Myspace), or in developing applications for individual use. There is far less understanding, or investment in human technical networks and processes that are intended to deliberately result in social change or community change, particularly in communities for whom electronic communication is secondary to having an adequate income or social survival. The communal dimension (and focus of Community Informatics) results in a strong interest in studying and developing strategies for how ICTs can enable and empower those living in physical communities. This is particularly the case in those communities where ICT access is done communally, through Telecentres, information kiosks, community multimedia centres, and other technologies. This latter set of approaches has become of very considerable interest as Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) has emerged as significant element in strategic (and funding) approaches to social and economic development in Less Developed Countries. ICT4D initiatives have been undertaken by public, NGO and private sector agencies concerned with development such as the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation; have emerged as a key element in the poverty alleviation component of the UN's Millennium Development Goals; and as important directions for private sector investment both from a market perspective (cf. the "Bottom of the Pyramid") and from companies concerned with finding a delivery channel for goods and services into rural and low income communities. While the progress of ICT4D has been remarkably fast in general as communities become more information based, digital divide appears to be a great challenge to its proponents. Although access to information technology in North America and Europe is high, it is the complete opposite in other regions of the world, particularly in Africa and in some parts of Asia. For instance, in the ASEAN region alone, there are countries who are leaders in digital technology such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand while on the other side of the pole are countries who have very poor access to and development in digital technology including Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The effectiveness of ICT as a tool for development is highly contingent on the capacity of all countries to accommodate and maintain information and communications technology. There is thus growing interest in Community Informatics as an approach to understanding of how different ICTs can enable and empower marginalized communities to achieve their collective goals.

Social informatics refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization—including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices. Historically, social informatics research has been strong in the Scandinavian countries, the UK and Northern Europe. In Europe some researchers have pointed out that in order to create awareness of the importance of social issues of computing, one has to focus on didactics of social informatics. Within North America, the field is represented largely through independent research efforts at a number of diverse institutions. Social informatics research diverges from earlier, deterministic (both social and technological) models for measuring the social impacts of technology. Such technological deterministic models characterized information technologies as tools to be installed and used with a pre determined set of impacts on society dictated by the technology's stated capabilities. Similarly, the socially deterministic theory represented by some proponents of the social construction of technology (SCOT) or social shaping of technology theory see technology as the product of human social forces.

There is a tension between the practice and research ends of the field. To some extent this reflects the gap, familiar from other disciplines such as community development, community organizing and community based research. In addition, the difficulty that Information Systems has in recognising the qualitative dimension of technology research means that the kind of approach taken by supporters of community informatics is difficult to justify to a positive field oriented towards solutions of technical, rather than social problems. This is a difficulty also seen in the relationship between strict technology research and management research. Some of the theoretical and practical tensions are also familiar from such disciplines as program evaluation and social policy, and perhaps paradoxically, Management Information Systems, where there is continual debate over the relative virtue and values of different forms of research and action, spread around different understandings of the virtues or otherwise of allegedly "scientific" or "value free" activity (frequently associated with "responsible" and deterministic public policy philosophies), and contrasted with more interpretive and process driven viewpoints in bottom up or practice driven activity. Community informatics would in fact probably benefit from closer knowledge of, and relationship to, theorists, practitioners, and evaluators of rigorous qualitative research and practice. A further concern is the potential for practice to be "hijacked" by policy or academic agendas, rather than being driven by community goals, both in developed and developing countries. The ethics of technology intervention in indigenous or other communities has not been sufficiently explored, even though ICTs are increasingly looked upon as an important tool for social and economic development in such communities. Moreover, neither explicit theoretical positions nor ideological positioning has yet emerged. Many projects appear to have developed with no particular disciplinary affiliation, arising more directly from policy or practice imperatives to 'do something' with technology as funding opportunities arise or as those at the grassroots (or working with the grassroots) identify ICT as possible resources to respond to local issues, problems or opportunities. The papers and documented outcomes (as questions or issues for further research or elaboration) on the wiki of the October 2006 Prato conference demonstrate that many of the social, rather than technical issues are key questions of concern to any practitioner in community settings: how to bring about change; the nature of authentic or manufactured community; ethical frameworks; or the politics of community research. A different strain of critique has emerged from gender studies. Some theorists have argued that feminist contributions to the field have yet to be fully acknowledged and Community Informatics as a research area has yet to welcome feminist interventions. This exists despite the presence of several gender oriented studies and leadership roles played by women in community informatics initiatives.

Research and practice ranges from concerns with purely virtual communities; to situations in which virtual or online communication are used to enhance existing communities in urban, rural, or remote geographic locations in developed or developing countries; to applications of ICTs for the range of areas of interest for communities including social and economic development, environmental management, media and "content" production, public management and e governance among others. A central concern, although one not always realized in practice is with "enabling" or "empowering" communities with ICT that is, ensuring that the technology is available for the community. This further implies an approach to development which is rather more "bottom up" than "top down". Areas of concern range from small scale projects in particular communities or organizations which might involve only a handful of people, such as telecentres; an on online community of disabled people; civic networks and to large national, government sponsored networking projects in countries such as Australia and Canada or local community projects such as working with Maori families in New Zealand. The Gates Foundation has been active in supporting public libraries in countries such as Chile. An area of rapidly developing interest is in the use of ICT as a means to enhance citizen engagement as an "e Governance" counterpart (or counterweight) to transaction oriented initiatives. A key conceptual element and framing concept for Community Informatics is that of "effective use" introduced initially by Michael Gurstein in a critique of a research pre occupation with the Digital Divide as ICT "access". CI is concerned with how ICTs are used in practice and not simply facilitating "access" to them and the notion of "effective use" is a bridge between CI research (research and analysis of the constituent elements of effective use), CI policy (developing enabling structures and programmes supportive of "effective use") and practice (implementing applications and services in support of local communities). Another way to understand CI is Clement and Shade's "access rainbow" (Clement and Shade 2000). Clement and Shade have contended that accomplishing insignificant specialized connectedness to the Internet is no assurance that an individual or group will prevail with regards to appropriating new ICTs in ways that advance their improvement, independence, or empowerment. It is an approach which has multi layered socio specialized model for universal access to ICTs. It is displayed as seven layers, starting with the fundamental technical components of connectedness and moving upward through layers that inexorably push the essential social framework of access. The seven layers are:

7. Governance

6. Literacy / Social facilitation

5. Service / Access providers

4. Content / Services

3. Software tools

2. Devices

1. Carriage

Even though all elements are important, the most important one is the content /service layer in the middle, since this is where the actual utility is most direct. The upper layers focus on social dimensions and the lower layers focus on technical aspects. It is surprising in fact, how much in common is found when people from developed and non developed countries meet. A common theme is the struggle to convince policy makers of the legitimacy of this approach to developing electronically literate societies, instead of a top down or trickle down approach, or an approach dominated by technical, rather than social solutions which in the end, tend to help vendors rather than communities. A common criticism that is frequently raised amongst participants at events such as the Prato conferences is that a focus on technical solutions evades the social changes that communities need to achieve in their values, activities and other people oriented outcomes in order to make better use of technology. The field tends to have a progressive bent, being concerned about the use of technology for social and cultural development connected to a desire for capacity building or expanding social capital, and in a number of countries, governments and foundations have funded a variety of community informatics projects and initiatives, particularly from a more tightly controlled, though not well articulated social planning perspective, though knowledge about long term effects of such forms of social intervention on use of technology is still in its early stages.

Even though that community networks and public libraries have similitudes in various ways, there are some obstacles that upset the probability of cooperation in the future between them. Albeit both CNs and libraries are concerned with giving information services to the society, an exchange is by all accounts lacking between the two communities. The mission of libraries is frequently rather barely engaged and, with regards to managing people and different institutes, their methodology can be to some degree unbending. Thusly, CN specialists, while institutionally more adaptable, rush to expel the part of public libraries in the community, tending to see the library essentially as a store of books upheld by public subsidizing. Public libraries have a long standing custom of association with their communities, yet their conditions and concerns contrast from those of community networks (CNs).