Community Network Analysis CNA Project

1
Community Network Analysis (CNA)Project

• Dr Peter Day, Dr Jon Don,
• Richard Cupidi,
• Mark Walker, Anne Stafford Keith Beadle

2
Community Research

• Our partnerships and activities with communities
  are
• intended to empower participating communities
• shaped by community assets and resources but
  driven by community needs
• community needs are what drive our academic
  interest and activities.

3
Praxis in Participatory Action Research
Melkote, S.R. 2003. Theories of Development
Communication. In Mody, B. (ed). International
and Development Communication A 21st-Century
Perspective. London Sage. p139

• Power implications
• Relationship between researcher and community
  Doing with
• Not expert subject

4
Project aims

• Utilising a range of participatory methodological
  tools and approaches, CNA aims to

• Investigate the potential, for adoption by
  geographic communities and communities of
  practice/interest, of network technologies
  (including mobile telephony) as tools for
  building and sustaining social capital.
• Test, through social network analysis, the impact
  of ICTs on the social ties and cohesion of
  community groups and networks through active
  communications and information flows.

5
What is the CNA project?
Nationally funded research project based on
principles of community participation and
mutuality Community information flows
communication patterns/behaviour If and how ICTs
can be, or are being, used as tools to build
active, healthy communities
6
Project overview
1) Profiling the community
2) Social network analysis
4) Community communications space
3) Participatory learning workshops
You can contact the CNA project team by phoning
us on 01273 642550 or 0774 3878340. Alternatively
you can e-mail us at peter_at_cna.org.uk or
richard_at_cna.org.uk. Our postal address is Peter
Day, CNA Project, CMIS, Watts Building,
University of Brighton, Moulsecoomb, Brighton,
BN2 4GJ.
7
1st 12 months of project

• Engaging with community voluntary sector
• How?
• Baseline research
• Sussex Community Internet Project (SCIP) for
  P2B.net project
• Communities of Interest Network (COIN)

8
Exploring the landscape

• A report on services, resources, participation
  and gaps for Communities of Interest in 15
  Neighbourhood Renewal Areas in Brighton Hove
• Gap in communication, understanding and
  collaboration
• Need to achieve greater synergy
• Improve empowerment capacity building
• Nature of facilities resources
• Desire to network engage with others

9
Technology, the community and us
10
What, for instance, could we provide?
lots of things!

• blogs
• mailing lists
• wikis
• content management
• contact management/finding people and places
• calendars and schedules
• image libraries
• shared links
• announcements
• for sale/ wanted
• adverts
• shared drawing spaces
• RSS feeds
• webmeetings
• podcasts
• learning management systems
• database integration/publication
• peer to peer services
• GIS

• forums
• chatrooms
• instant messenging
• internet service provision
• webcams
• polls and surveys
• e-learning
• games
• graffiti
• interactive whiteboard
• video conferencing
• MMS/SMS messageboards
• news and articles
• GPS services
• self-organising/social software
• groupware
• administration
• statistics
• site/domain management

11
What community groups want

• content / site management / blogs / wikis
• mailing lists / email / forums / chat
• database publication
• hosting and support
• search
• statistics
• errr

12
Sustainable technologies

• Problems
• safe exploration and experimentation
• when the project ends
• Some (partial) solutions
• open source / open standards
• clustered / redundant
• flexible / evolvable / self-organising

13
Technology development

• Sandbox (CNA)
• Stable community server (SCIP)

14
Engaging the community

• Stories from a story-telling workshop
• Geraldines story
• Geraldine Unas stories
• Developing collaborative partnerships
• Dialogue ? talking listening
• Building trust ? working at the participants
  pace
• Takes time ? requires patience and a lot of hard
  work
• Expect the unexpected ? be prepared to hear
  unwanted or unpalatable things
• Frustrating ? but results will be worth it

15
Questions?

• web
• http//www.cna.org.uk
• email
• peter_at_cna.org.uk
• richard_at_cna.org.uk
• jon_at_cna.org.uk
• mark_at_cna.org.uk