Printing the Network: AIDS Activism and Online Access in the 1980s

HIV/AIDS activists in the 1980s made up a significant cohort of early computer network users, who used Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) to create and circulate health information amongst PWA (People living with AIDS) communities. This article explores how these early adopters extended access to new computer networks by printing online information in newsletters. Their work bridged the sharing of text files over BBS—a novel networked practice—with more traditional activist media tools familiar to readers trained in civil rights, homophile, and feminist organizing. The article focuses on the Philadelphia-based organization Critical Path, led by Kiyoshi Kuromiya, who applied systems theories drawn from Buckminster Fuller’s work to the problem of HIV/AIDS. Critical Path’s print newsletter drew on BBS to put information in the hands of a wide constituency of PWAs and their allies. They targeted, in particular, PWA communities excluded from access to medical research trials based on race, gender, drug use, or carceral status, and did so through a multimedia practice that recognized how access to emerging computer networks was similarly stratified. Through analyzing Critical Path’s digital-to-print practice, I argue that HIV/AIDS activists approached new online networks as a fundamental equity issue shaped by their broader understandings of the structural violence performed by exclusion from good, up-to-date information

Building Networks of Practice

{Excerpt} Extensive media coverage of applications such as FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn suggests that networks are a new phenomenon. They are not: the first network was born the day people decided to create organizational structures to serve common interests—that is, at the dawn of mankind. However, the last 10–20 years have witnessed rapid intensification and evolution of networking activities, driven of course by information and communication technologies as well as globalization. These make it possible for individuals to exchange data, information, and knowledge; work collaboratively; and share their views much more quickly and widely than ever before. Thus, less and less of an organization’s knowledge resides within its formal boundaries or communities of practice. Knowledge cannot be separated from the networks that create, use, and transform it. In parallel, networks now play significant roles in how individuals, groups, organizations, and related systems operate. They will be even more important tomorrow. Since we can no longer assume that closely knit groups are the building blocks of human activity—or treat these as discrete units of analysis—we need to recognize and interface with less-bounded organizations, from non-local communities to links among websites. We should make certain that knowledge harvested in the external environment is integrated with what exists within, especially in dynamic fields where innovation stems from inter-organizational knowledge sharing and learning. Therefore, the structure and composition of nodes and ties, and how these affect norms and determine usefulness, must become key concerns. This makes the study of networks of practice a prime interest for both researchers and practitioners

Information Sharing and Coordination in Collaborative Flood Warning and Response Systems

The introduction of new information and communication technologies enables communities to share information and self-organize in the response to disasters. Crowd-sourcing approaches enable professional authorities to capture information from the ground in real-time. However, there is a gap between the professional and community-driven response: locally emergent initiatives may lack the overview needed for efficient coordination, while decisions taken by professionals may not consider the actual situation on the ground. We study this information sharing and coordination gap through the lens of urban flood early warning and response systems. Based on a literature review combining academic articles as well as guidelines and reports from practice, we derive design principles for these systems. Considering the case study of Accra, specific requirements are individuated. The design principles are then used to address the requirements, resulting in a set of functionalities for a collaborative flood warning and response system. These functionalities provide the basis for further development and evaluation

Unraveling the Relationship between Content Design and Kinesthetic Learning on Communities of Practice Platforms

As a variant of the sharing economy, Communities of Practice (CoP) platforms have allowed kinesthetic learners to acquire skillsets corresponding to their interests for immediate or future use in practice. However, the impact of digital learning content design on kinesthetic learning remains underexplored in the field of information systems. We hence extend prior research by advancing content richness and structure clarity as antecedents affecting kinesthetic learners’ digestibility of contents, culminating in differential kinesthetic learning effects. To substantiate our arguments, we collected data from a leading Chinese recipe sharing platform. Whereas content richness was measured in terms of readability, verb richness, and prototypicality, structure clarity was operationalized as block structure, block quantity, and block regularity. Employing a machine learning model, we simulated and tested learners’ digestibility of image content embodied within recipes. Plans for future research beyond the current study are also discussed

Giving and Taking in Online Communities of Practice: The Role of Geography and Culture in Knowledge Sharing and Innovation

Researchers have long been fascinated with the phenomenon of lurking and free riding in knowledge sharing. This interest has led to the investigation of which factors drive decisions to contribute to a knowledge exchange as opposed to only exploiting the information in such exchange. Many studies have specifically focused on identifying the extrinsic and intrinsic motivational drivers for knowledge sharing in communities of practice by administering user surveys on behavioral intention, expectations, and satisfaction with the community. Our analysis is different from prior studies in that it does not look at expectations of reciprocity and other individual characteristics. Rather, it extracts and analyzes interaction data and, then, it groups such data based on factors like geographical location and related cultural background. This study adopts known models of national culture and relates them to social interactions using a large dataset mined from an online community of practice. The results show interesting deviations from the literature, which may be limited to the specific community of practice (programmers sharing coding knowledge) or may guide the design of open innovation systems that support knowledge sharing. This paper presents the first step on why and how to conduct such studies and suggests open questions for future study

Joining it up: multi-professional information sharing

YesThis chapter introduces four theoretical approaches to the challenge of multi-professional information sharing in public service delivery. Two of the four approaches are then described in more detail as lenses through which to explore what happens in the practice of integrated children’s services. The two approaches explored in detail are the systems approach and the approach that underpins much of this book: Etienne Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’. The focus of the chapter is on the professionals delivering the services and not primarily on the children, young people or their families who are in receipt of these services. This approach however is in no way antagonistic to the idea that it is the interests of the children and young people that must always come first when redesigning organizations, policies, procedures and guidance for practice in children’s services

Not what you know, nor who you know, but who you know already: Examining Online Information Sharing Behaviours in a Blogging Environment through the Lens of Social Exchange Theory

This paper focuses on the extent to which online information sharing practice is socially motivated. A key interest is how knowledge of the existing social connections between actors may predict their information sharing behaviour when they move into an online environment, and the relative importance of these connections when set against other factors that may motivate online information sharing within a closed group. The examination of online information exchanges between members of a defined community of bloggers reveals that those with established off-line relationships are more likely to interact with one another when they move into an online environment than those who have not enjoyed earlier contact. The findings of the empirical study are evaluated with reference to social exchange theory, with acknowledgement of the importance of shared social capital as a prerequisite for the efficient operation of work-groups, both in face-to-face and online environments. It is concluded that social exchange theory can be deployed as a means of explaining online information sharing behaviours. The study findings have implications for the design of environments for purposes of online information sharing, especially in terms of the provision of substitutes for physical proximity in distributed organisations, the operation of reward systems, and expectations for communities to develop their own information sharing ecologies

Is a Theory of the Problem Sufficient for a Theory of the Solution? Negotiating Tensions among Research, Practice, Advocacy and Activism in Serving Immigrant Communities

The lives of members of immigrant communities are inevitably shaped by U.S. laws, rapidly-shifting immigration policy, institutional policies and practices (e.g., in schools), and how immigrants are welcomed (or not) by members of host communities (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). These and other aspects of the context of reception have important implications for immigrant integration, education and employment, and mental health. Accordingly, there have been significant calls for psychologists to take active roles in advocacy and activism, which resonates deeply with many of us. Roundtable organizers are community psychologists working with immigrant communities and seeking to negotiate the tensions that can arise at the intersections of research, practice, advocacy and activism. For example: • APA’s Toolkit for Local Advocacy defines advocacy as sharing information within a system with the assumption that the information will help the system respond effectively; activism, on the other hand, is more likely to indict systems perceived as unjust, perhaps from the outside. How does one choose between--or balance--advocacy and activism? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each for trying to solve specific problems in different contexts? • How does one balance social science and research goals that presumably could provide valuable information in working with immigrant communities with advocacy and activism goals? Can we have one without the other, and if so, should we? • If we integrate these roles, do we run the risk of being perceived as less objective on one hand and less invested in communities (or complicit in injustice) on the other? • Is a theory of the problem sufficient for a theory of the solution? Is it possible to move from problems to solutions without the insight and influence that insiders can provide? Participants will share the (imperfect) ways they have balanced research, practice, advocacy and activism in their work