Computer support for community work

1
Computer support for community work

• General
• Social issues. Economies of online cooperation
• Community networks
• Network communities, learning
• Commercialists
• Community of practice
• Specifics of work in communities

2
General community

• Very hard to define in sociology (shared
  interests, passions, goals, routines, procedures,
  values, etc)
• A clear agreement among CSCW researchers that
  supporting only 9-17 work is not enough
• There are activities outside the conventional
  employed work that can, and do, get computer
  support IRC, MUD, electronic conferences, BBS

3
General early community

• Howard Rheingold, 1993, The Virtual Community.
  Homesteading at the electronic Fronteer WELL, a
  grassroots movement
• Dial-up electronic conference
• Getting help from the community on issues like
  parenting Life and death in the community
• Barn raising and horse trading a gift economy
• Economic viability due to the Grateful Dead fans

4
Social Issues

• Smith and Kollock, Communities in cyberspace,
  1996
• Identity and deception gender swapping, race,
  sex-on-the-phone, boundary-crossing behavior,
  anecdotal
• Governance (see also Curtis, MUDs)
• Structure
• Collective action

5
Social Issues Cooperation

• So, why do people cooperate? (e.g. Usenet
  expertise) (Kollock and Smith)
• The tragedy of the commons
• Mathematical models, prisoners dillemma (Axelrod
  1984), iterative versions
• Usenet and mailing list economics, lurkers and
  suckers
• Linux, the impossible public good

6
Community Networks

• Enhancing local communities with network support
• Alarming signs of the dissapearance of community
  in the American society, Putnam, Oldenberg
• Dough Schuler, 1994, research and social activism
• Public CSCW
• Carroll et al., The Blacksburg Electronic
  Village
• Better home shopping, or new democracy?

7
Network communities

• Mynatt et al. 1997-1999
• Derived as an archetype from Media spaces and
  MUDs
• robust and persistent, locality spans the
  social and the virtual
• Persistence, periodicity, boundaries, engagement,
  authoring

8
Learning in Communities

• Bruckman, constructionist learning MOOSE
  Crossing
• ODay et al., from a MUD to a learning place
• Relying on a social practice to simplify
  technical implementation
• Designing technical mechanisms to achieve a
  social objective
• Similar tools with different social effects
• Co-evolution of social and technical mechanisms

9
Commercialists

• Engineering a new community for a commercial
  purpose (e.g. the community of X cereal eaters)
• Lists of guidelines (e.g. Kollock, 1996, Andrews
  2002, Goodwin 1994)
• Design principles, no algorithm, no
  step-by-step recipe

10
Kollocks design principles

• It must be likely that two individuals will meet
  again in the future
• Individuals should be able to identify each other
• Group boundaries must be clearly defined
• Rules are well matched to the local needs
• Self-governance
• Confront members with a crisis

11
Community of practice

• Legitimate peripheral participation
• Learning slowly advance from the periphery to
  the core of the community
• Double-knit organisations (McDermott)
• Minority disciplines (Muller)

12
Amateur Radio Community

• Contingencies of communication. An
  experiumentation medium
• The challenge of making radio work
• Peer review of contributions
• The power of the audience. The public
• Pioneering new directions in radio (Ham and
  public)

13
Specifics of work in communities

• Challenge, contingency, pioneering, audience,
  peer-review
• Applying to voluntary student work
• Situated action, contingency
• Community work pleasurable situatedness
• Reading back the findings into other community
  literature