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The Journal of Community Informatics http://www.ci-journal.net/ (JoCI)
is pleased to announce the online availability of its Inaugural Issue
http://ci-journal.net/viewissue.php . JoCI is a peer-reviewed Open
Archive on-line quarterly journal for and by the Community Informatics
research community and produced under the auspices of the Community
Informatics Research Network (CIRN) http://www.ci-research.net
This Inaugural Issue of JoCI is an invitational response by members of
the Editorial Group to give a context to our enterprise through position
papers, scholarly papers and other materials.
The issue includes:
- An introduction (in part through video) to the work of K-Net, an
aboriginal group in Northern Canada which is innovating in the use of
ICT for education, for administration, for health and perhaps most
importantly, is demonstrating the way in which ICT truly can enable AND
empower communities to move beyond traditional barriers and impediments
to find a new and more equitable role in the Information Society.
(Beaton)
- A description of an ambitious current research project examining the
impacts and outcomes of government support for community technology in
Canada with an overall objective of providing insight toward the future
of such programs and their impact on the larger society (Clement,
Gurstein, Longford, Luke, Moll, and Shade)
- A presentation of a most important rural ICT initiative whose current
success is transforming large areas of rural India (Jhunjhunwala,
Ramachandran, and Bandyopadhyay)
- An analysis and plan for using a major university in a Less Developed
Country (South Africa) as a base for a highly innovative program of CI
for community transformation (Erwin and Taylor)
- A highly significant analysis of the current state of the art with
respect to Telecentre development in Latin America and where it might go
from here by three key actors in these developments. (Menou, Delgadillo
and Stoll)
- A fine paper examining the theoretical background to community use of
ICT in the context of Human Capital development and giving most useful
directions for future research as well as community practice towards
this end. (Pigg and Crank)
- A most original and insightful critique of current thinking and
approaches to ICT for Development (Robinson)
- A path breaking approach to applying an analysis drawn from the methods
and insights of Social Anthropology to ICT design and development as a
response to rural poverty (Salvador)
- A brave and insightful analysis of the opportunities and risks that are
attendant to ICT in a most important but largely unknown part of the
world. (Stafeev) and
- A document presenting the current "state of play" for a leader in
supporting ICT use by women in local communities (Webb and Jones) .
The second issue which will appear January 1, 2006, will consist of peer
reviewed papers on "Sustainability and Community Technology" presented
at the recent CIRN Prato conference
http://www.ciresearch.net/conferences on this subject. The papers will
be revised and edited as per conference feedback and a second round of
peer reviews. The third issue scheduled for April 1, 2006 is currently
soliciting articles http://ci-journal.net/submissions.php. The fourth
issue, scheduled for July 1, 2006 has the tentative theme "Gender and
Community Informatics" and will be edited by Lesle Reagen Shade of
Concordia University.
Each issue will include, in addition to peer reviewed articles, a Review
section, documents and reports of CI significance, and commentaries on
peer reviewed papers by leading CI practitioners and those with a policy
interest in CI and related matters.
The Second International Conference on
COMMUNITIES AND TECHNOLOGIES
(C&T 2005)
Milan, Italy, 13-16 June, 2005
http://www.cct2005.disco.unimib.it/
The relationship between communities and technology is an increasingly
important research topic as the number of communities turning to
technology for online and face-to-face support grows. The Second
International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2005)
conference provides a forum for stimulating and disseminating research
about all facets of community and technology support for communities.
To be successful this field requires multidisciplinary research efforts
involving researchers from different fields of applied computer science
(Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Computer Supported Collaborative
Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Human Computer
Interaction, Information Systems), the social sciences (Economics,
Management Science, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology,
Ethnography, Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Economics) and many
application areas, such as Education, Business, Medicine and civic
engagement.
Communities are social entities whose participants share common goals,
needs, interests, and practices: they constitute the basic units of
social experience. For a number of reasons, researchers are increasingly
interested in the topic of communities. First, within a global
knowledge-based society, communities play a pivotal role. Problems such
as new forms of political participation and civic engagement,
maintenance of cultural identity, or the integration of minorities need
to be tackled on the community level. Second, communities also re-shape
the processes of learning and sharing knowledge in and among
organizations, formal and informal groups. The Internet and the Web make
communication possible across national boundaries and between cultures
in ways that could not happen before. Furthermore, mobile devices,
particularly advanced phone technologies, promise to open the Internet
to people who have been denied access for financial, technical and
cultural reasons.
For information technologies to support communities research is needed
to understand the social, technical and usability needs of participants.
Many topics need to be addressed including: trust-building, maintaining
(awareness of) social relations, social capital, visualization of social
relationships, matching (unknown) participants, bridging between
physical and electronically-mediated interaction, cultural needs.
The conference offers an opportunity to present and discuss empirical
and conceptual research. Topics covered include, but are not restricted
to the following subjects:
Social science approaches of communities and technologies:
- models and theories
- online communities and organization theory
- communities and social network analysis
- ethnographic studies of virtual communities
Social dimensions of community technologies:
- privacy and security
- empathy and trust
- participation and non-participation
- community learning
Local communities and social capital:
- technologies and social capital development
- community informatics / digital cities
- case studies of community building and development
- cross-cultural communities
- communities and NGO's
- local, rural and regional communities
Communities in organizations and business:
- communities and business models
- consumer communities and electronic commerce
- online consumer and brand communities
- communities and knowledge management
Communities and innovation:
- communities of practice and communities of interest
- communities and innovation
- open source communities
- epistemic communities and technology development
Technologies for community support:
- virtual, networked and mobile community formation and development
- novel forms of technology support
- design and development methods
- technical architectures
- interoperability among community systems
- virtual community support for education, business, government, civic
activities, et
- light-weight technologies
- visualization
Important Dates:
November, 12, 2004: Submission deadline for papers;
December, 03, 2004: Submission deadline for workshops;
December, 23, 2004: Notification of acceptance for workshops;
January, 15, 2005: Notification of acceptance for papers;
February, 15, 2005: Submission of camera-ready papers;
May, 13, 2005: early registration;
June, 13 to 16, 2005: Conference held in Milano.
PARENTS, MEDIA AND PUBLIC POLICY
A majority of parents say they are “very” concerned about the amount of
sex (60%) and violence (53%) their children are exposed to on TV,
according to a new national survey of parents released today by the
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And after being read arguments on
both sides of the issue, nearly two-thirds of parents (63%) say they
favor new regulations to limit the amount of sex and violence in TV
shows during the early evening hours, when children are most likely to
be watching (35% are opposed). Overall parents are more concerned about
inappropriate content on TV than in other media: 34% say TV concerns
them most, compared to 16% who say the Internet, 10% movies, 7% music,
and 5% video games. Half (50%) of all parents say they have used the TV
ratings to help guide their children’s viewing, including one in four
(24%) who say they use them “often.” While use of the V-Chip has
increased substantially since 2001 (when 7% of all parents said they
used it), it remains modest at just 15% of all parents, or about four in
10 (42%) of those who report having a V-Chip equipped TV.
Find the survey report at
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=46689
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