From Needs Analysis to Power Analysis: A Framework to Examine & Broker Power in Makerspaces

This pre-print is a chapter to be included in the forthcoming book, Re-making the Makerspace: Critical Theories, Reflections and Practices (Melo and Nichols, 2019). This chapter presents a power analysis framework that extends an entry point to examine how power is wielded, concentrated, and systemically embedded within a makerspace. Power analyses are not novel concepts. People, especially women, LGBTQ+ and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), assess power dynamics in their lives routinely. Research shows that the marginalization of these communities are especially pronounced in tech-centric environments such as makerspaces (Meyer, 2018; Lewis 2015). This is especially baffling because makerspaces are notoriously promoted as open, collaborative environments where everyone is considered to be a maker (“Be a Maker”). This is where this power analysis framework intervenes: How do purportedly open and collaborative makerspaces continue to attract a narrow demographic of users, while simultaneously marginalizing certain communities (Britton 2015; Vossoughi, S., Hooper, P., & Escudé, M., 2016; Warnshuis, 2014)? This framework provides structured, not prescriptive, guidance to support persons interested in analyzing the power dynamics within a makerspace (or by extension other (in)formal STEM-rich learning spaces). In particular, the analysis offers users an instrument to examine the phenomenological properties of power with a structured approach. The intention is to give language and semblance to power -- an otherwise abstract entity (Pachecho 2018). This tool is meant to generate insights and data for the user, and is comprised of open-ended questions/suggestions on several domains where power resides. The following domains comprise this burgeoning framework: “people,” “space and equipment,” “events and programming,” and “outputs” -- these areas are further detailed later in the chapter. Similar to a 360 image, there isn’t one place to start because power is multi-directional and complex. Users are encouraged to begin with any domain of their choosing

Social Media Representations of Makerspaces

Libraries across the world have increasingly established makerspaces and incorporated making-related activities into their programming. Yet little is known about how this proliferation translates digitally. In response, this study uncovers how libraries construct virtual representations of makers and makerspaces through their social media content and the evolution of content across time. This research analyzed 36,756 social media posts created between 2012-2021 and identifies statistically significant changes in quantitative metrics, uncovers the themes present in posts, and describes the identities and topics featured. Revealing these digital representations of makers and making is important because this content can replicate oppressive structures by influencing who uses these spaces and what is created

Examining the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on library makerspaces and LIS makerspace curricula

The paper will outline two synergistic analyses that engage with the themes of resilient futures and education: a case study on the pandemic’s impact on LIS makerspace course curricula that was quickly converted from face-to-face to remote learning, and a broader analysis that explores how makerspace information professionals in higher education have adapted their services in response to safety protocols and to the holistic needs of their user communities. This paper contributes both to the conversation of LIS curricula as it pertains to teaching and training upcoming information professionals for careers in makerspaces, while also contextualizing these adaptations within the larger changes that were implemented by academic library makerspaces in North Carolina

The Shadow Rhetorics of Innovation: Maker Culture, Gender, and Technology

What are the rhetorics of innovation? This project examines the compelling, persuasive, and often alluring features of innovation. Specifically, this project contends that popularized conceptualizations of innovation affectively shape tech environments in ways that ultimately (dis)place women-identified users and their contributions from these spaces. Compounding popularized conceptualizations of innovation are the silent, yet paradoxically loud, rhetorics of innovation where marginalized communities are invisibilized and innovative making practices undertaken by women are underrepresented. This project pays particular attention to these thresholds and limitations of innovation or, in other words, the shadow rhetorics that are always already present in prominent discourses surrounding innovation. In this context, the shadow rhetorics of innovation disrupt common assumptions that undermine the alluring features of innovation. The project focuses on a specific brand of innovation. Analyses are contextualized and examined within the Maker Movement—a social phenomenon that emerged from Silicon Valley. Using affect theory as the primary theoretical framework for this project, I conducted a mixed-methods approach to examine how innovation has been conceptualized in past, present, and future time frames. In the project, I generate topic models on a textual corpus of twenty innovation websites, analyze pre-event survey responses from a women’s-only hackathon, and examine data collected from an institutional review board approved study on making in a makerspace. These three methods function well independently to generate data about the shadow rhetorics of innovation as a persuasive mechanism that continues to shape the innovation environments. Importantly, however, they also function integrally: the results of each study inform the analyses of the others. Based on my analysis of these data sets, I argue that innovation-centric environments are engrained with gender biases that negatively shape the socio-technical relationships that women-identified users develop within these environments

Makerspaces in U.S. State Colleges and Universities

This is a census of makerspaces in U.S. state colleges and institutions