Accessing and Browsing Information and Communication,by Ronald E. Rice,Maureen McCreadie,and Shan-Ju L. Chang. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 2001. xiii + 357 pp., $45.00. ISBN 0-262-18214-9.

Critics have argued that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic observations from Netville, a 2-year community networking experiment, suggest that weak, not strong ties experience growth as a result of ICTs. By examining a unique and underexplored stage in the life cycle of a community networking project, the end of a networking trial, this article demonstrates how ICTs facilitate community participation and collective action (a) by creating large, dense networks of relatively weak social ties and (b) through the use of ICTs as an organizing tool.     

Grieving for a Lost Network: Collective Action in a Wired Suburb

Critics have argued that information and communication technologies (ICTs) disconnect people from their social networks and reduce public participation. Research in support of this perspective has been biased by two assumptions. The first is a tendency to privilege the Internet as a social system removed from the other ways people communicate. The second is a tendency to favor broadly supportive strong social ties. Survey and ethnographic observations from Netville, a 2-year community networking experiment, suggest that weak, not strong ties experience growth as a result of ICTs. By examining a unique and underexplored stage in the life cycle of a community networking project, the end of a networking trial, this article demonstrates how ICTs facilitate community participation and collective action (a) by creating large, dense networks of relatively weak social ties and (b) through the use of ICTs as an organizing tool.     

Appreciating the Contribution of Broadband ICT With Rural and Remote Communities: Stepping Stones Toward an Alternative Paradigm

This article challenges conventional policy development and evaluation approaches that emphasize the instrumental side of technology. There is a growing gap between conventional planning and evaluation approaches for rural broadband ICTs that seek to demonstrate a direct link between investments and results on the one hand, and on the other, with evidence that the contribution of ICTs to rural economic, social and cultural wellbeing is increasingly difficult to demonstrate beyond short-term measurable indicators. The article proposes an alternative paradigm based on sociotechnical systems, stakeholder engagement, an acknowledgment of the multiple dimensions at play, and the growing evidence of unpredictability of ICTs. The article emphasizes a perspective based on “contribution,” not attribution; policymaking that is both adaptive and inclusive of multiple perspectives; methodological testing of emerging evaluation methodologies; and projects as learning experiments. This alternative theoretical and policymaking paradigm is encapsulated in a metaphor based on the management of natural resources where stakeholders track their own indicators of impact by reading how the system responds to a project intervention.     

E-government and citizen's engagement with local affairs through e-websites: The case of Spanish municipalities

As a mixture of new technologies, processes and services oriented to the citizen, e-government has become one of the most important keywords for the public sector reform with proponents claiming that it guarantees transparency, accountability and better communication between local and national administrations and their public. Few if any studies have investigated the factors that might contribute to the establishment of trusting relationship between city councils and citizens. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of three types of information communication technologies (ICTs) towards the use of e-government and the development of civic engagement. We conduct an empirical investigation of 179 Spanish official town websites (web sites in the municipalities). The research findings suggest that implementing ICT not only involves a step towards an increase in the use of e-government services by people, but also provides numerous opportunities for their civic engagement. The main conclusion of this study is that although ICT can leverage the adoption of e-government, it cannot create alone engagement with traditional activities of the local government. What is missing from this relationship is a mediating variable (adoption of e-government by government officers), which in turn can greatly help to better understand how ICT impacts relationships between governments and their citizens.     

Rob Kling Remembered: The Early Beginnings of Social Analysis of Computing in the URBIS Project 1

This article challenges conventional policy development and evaluation approaches that emphasize the instrumental side of technology. There is a growing gap between conventional planning and evaluation approaches for rural broadband ICTs that seek to demonstrate a direct link between investments and results on the one hand, and on the other, with evidence that the contribution of ICTs to rural economic, social and cultural wellbeing is increasingly difficult to demonstrate beyond short-term measurable indicators. The article proposes an alternative paradigm based on sociotechnical systems, stakeholder engagement, an acknowledgment of the multiple dimensions at play, and the growing evidence of unpredictability of ICTs. The article emphasizes a perspective based on “contribution,” not attribution; policymaking that is both adaptive and inclusive of multiple perspectives; methodological testing of emerging evaluation methodologies; and projects as learning experiments. This alternative theoretical and policymaking paradigm is encapsulated in a metaphor based on the management of natural resources where stakeholders track their own indicators of impact by reading how the system responds to a project intervention.     

Scenarios of technology use to promote community engagement: Overcoming marginalization and bridging digital divides in the Southern and Central Appalachian rural libraries

This article identifies scenarios of technology use in rural libraries to promote community engagement in overcoming marginalization and bridging rural digital divides in the Southern and Central Appalachian (SCA) region. The research is based on a qualitative content analysis of feedback collected from 15 rural librarians in semi-structured interviews and three respondents each in five focus groups during 2017–2018. Select scenarios defined as typical experience-related representative narratives of technology use of rural librarians serve as a tool to investigate their community-engaged initiatives. Respondents’ perspectives, behaviors, and experiences of technology use in community engagement selectively highlight their activities, collaborating partners, encountered challenges specific to the region, and the resulting outcomes of their initiatives. The article extends past theory-practice discourse in information science research to integrate impact that was documented in respondents’ community-engaged technology use behaviors in the SCA rural environments. It explores a positive model of technology use and community engagement in the SCA rural libraries as a strategy to overcome marginalization and bridge rural digital divides historically experienced in the region.     

Neither relativism nor imperialism: Theories and practices for a global information ethics

We highlight the important lessons our contributors present in our collective project of fostering dialogues both between applied ethics and computer science and between cultures. These include: critical reflexivity; procedural (partly Habermasian) approaches to establishing such central norms as “emancipation”; the importance of local actors in using ICTs both for global management and in development projects – especially as these contribute the trust essential for the social context of use of new technologies; and pluralistic approaches that preserve local cultural differences alongside shared norms. May Thorseth then contextualizes our work vis-a-vis broader philosophical discussions of deliberation and democracy.     

旅游虚拟社区成员的参加动机对其契合行为的影响——以户外旅行俱乐部为例

虚拟社区已成为当代旅游者的重要活动空间,他们在社区中展开发布信息、组织活动、寻求帮助、分享生活等非交易行为（即契合行为）,厘清旅游虚拟社区的参加动机及其与契合行为间的关系对于旅游虚拟社区的经营与发展具有重要意义。本文采用定量研究方法,对呼和浩特户外旅游虚拟社区进行了问卷调查,尝试明晰人们参加旅游虚拟社区的主要心理动因,并探索户外旅游虚拟社区中参加动机对于成员契合行为的影响。研究结果表明：旅游虚拟社区参加动机可划分为4种：自我成就、社交、学习和实际好处;虚拟社区参加动机对于契合行为具有显著影响,但仅对态度契合具有直接影响;群体认同是虚拟社区参加动机对契合行为产生影响的重要路径;契合行为的完全实现,必须要以达成态度契合为前提;旅游虚拟社区成员“参加动机-群体认同-态度契合-行为契合”的关系链条得以明晰,探索出从参加动机到契合行为的一般性普适路径。本文丰富了旅游虚拟社区契合行为研究,对旅游虚拟社区的经营管理者具有一定的借鉴和参考价值。     

Information and Communication Technology Challenges to Scientific Professional Identity

Increasingly, information and communication technology (ICT) uses are transforming professional activities and interactions in ways that challenge traditional assumptions about professional identity. In this article, we consider the ways in which the professional identities of research scientists in oceanography and marine biology are shaped by the use of ICTs. We draw empirical data from an ongoing study of scientific research collaborations that examines uses of basic communication technologies, as well as scientific technologies with embedded ICT components. Our analysis suggests that development and use of ICT-enabled scientific technologies are identity enhancing for many scientists, facilitating their development of unique areas of scientific knowledge. ICT-related changes in data collection, collaborative coordination, and scientific interaction also challenge traditional definitions of expertise and professional identity. An examination of these challenges directs attention to the project identities that form around ICT-enabled scientific technologies and the ways that those project identities are enacted through ICTs.     

Weak Ties in Networked Communities

Communities with high levels of social capital are likely to have a higher quality of life than communities with low social capital. This is due to the greater ability of such communities to organize and mobilize effectively for collective action because they have high levels of social trust, dense social networks, and well-established norms of mutuality (the major features of social capital). Communities with “bridging” social capital (weak ties across groups) as well as “bonding” social capital (strong ties within groups) are the most effective in organizing for collective action. People who belong to multiple groups act as bridging ties. When people with bridging ties use communication media, such as the Internet, they enhance their capability to educate community members and to organize, as needed, for collective action. This article summarizes evidence from stratified household survey data in Blacksburg, VA, showing that people with weak (bridging) ties across groups have higher levels of community involvement, civic interest, and collective efficacy than people without bridging ties among groups. Moreover, heavy Internet users with bridging ties have higher social engagement, use the Internet for social purposes, and have been attending more local meetings and events since going online than heavy Internet users with no bridging ties. These findings may suggest that the Internet—in the hands of bridging individuals–is a tool for enhancing social relations and information exchange, and for increasing face-to-face interaction, all of which help to build both bonding and bridging social capital in communities.     

Weak Ties in Networked Communities

Communities with high levels of social capital are likely to have a higher quality of life than communities with low social capital. This is due to the greater ability of such communities to organize and mobilize effectively for collective action because they have high levels of social trust, dense social networks, and well-established norms of mutuality (the major features of social capital). Communities with “bridging” social capital (weak ties across groups) as well as “bonding” social capital (strong ties within groups) are the most effective in organizing for collective action. People who belong to multiple groups act as bridging ties. When people with bridging ties use communication media, such as the Internet, they enhance their capability to educate community members and to organize, as needed, for collective action. This article summarizes evidence from stratified household survey data in Blacksburg, VA, showing that people with weak (bridging) ties across groups have higher levels of community involvement, civic interest, and collective efficacy than people without bridging ties among groups. Moreover, heavy Internet users with bridging ties have higher social engagement, use the Internet for social purposes, and have been attending more local meetings and events since going online than heavy Internet users with no bridging ties. These findings may suggest that the Internet—in the hands of bridging individuals-is a tool for enhancing social relations and information exchange, and for increasing face-to-face interaction, all of which help to build both bonding and bridging social capital in communities.     

Design and performance attributes driving mobile travel application engagement

Increasing people are using mobile applications (apps) for information and activities related to their travel and tourism. Therefore, customer engagement (customer attraction and retention) with mobile travel applications becomes extremely important for travel-related companies. However, there is little empirical research on what factors may drive customers’ engagement of using mobile travel apps. This study proposes a research framework, based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model, to explore how and to what extent two types of app attributes (i.e., app design and app performance attributes) stimulate travel apps engagement. Based on a user acceptance testing (UAT testing) of a real travel app development project, the study uses survey data from 804 tourists to validate the proposed research model. The results reveal different effectiveness of app design and app performance attributes, and demonstrate that two app design features (i.e., user interface attractiveness and privacy/security) and three app performance attributes (i.e., compatibility, ease of use, and relative advantages) are important drivers of users’ behavioral engagement of mobile travel apps. Further, psychological engagement and three types of benefit perception (i.e., hedonic benefit, utilitarian benefit, and social benefit) serially mediate the relationships. The results can be used to improve the related mobile app engagement research and the mobile travel app design.     

Old Freedoms and New Technologies: The Evolution of Community Networking

Unparalleled in human experience, the Internet, or simply the Net, is the code word for the technosocial accident that gives large numbers of people the means by which they can speak for themselves in public. This is an ironical reversal of the historical social patterning of asymmetrical, centralizing communicating technologies that have molded all of the social relations of modern society. The problematic for this distributed communication capability will be manifest in struggles around the legitimacy of self-expression, assembly, and privacy, in all of their forms. However, unlike the mass mediated discourse where, as the 'audience' object, we observed these externalized struggles by a narrow other, encounters with distributed media are palpable and subjective, and will be increasingly played out on the common terrain of local community. In initiating unconditional public access to the Net, community networks, or FreeNets, began the long process of blurring the distinction between the public and private terrain, of undoing that dichotomy that mass media technologies in this century have systematically rebuilt and fortified. Nudging along the process of democratic self-representation is the central issue for the Net, and the epochal project for community networks.     

ICTs in the Rush Hour of Life

In the Netherlands, many women have entered the labor market in the last two decades. This development - among other social changes - has resulted in substantial shifts in the time that Dutch people spend on paid labor and "caring tasks" on the one hand and leisure activities on the other hand. This task combination has caused serious time pressure and coordination problems among dual-income families with children. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to label this stage of life as the "rush hour of life". In this article the findings of a small-scale qualitative case study among these "busy" households are presented. The objective of this study is to describe and analyze patterns of acceptance and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially telecommunication technologies, in the context of the everyday life of these households. The question is raised whether ICTs can be a solution to time pressure and coordination problems. Theoretically, the research is rooted in a user-oriented perspective toward technological innovation, developed in the United Kingdom by Silverstone, Haddon, and others, which understands the incorporation of ICTs into the everyday life of households as a "domestication process". A paradoxical conclusion of this study is that ICTs are not explicitly perceived as solutions to the communication and coordination problems these households experience in everyday life, although they are being used for solving these problems. This ambiguity seems characteristic for the acceptance of ICTs in everyday life. The domestication concept is a useful concept to describe these ambivalent and paradoxical processes of (non)acceptance and use.     

Remembering Things

In an attempt to listen to things, and to unpack the dynamics and particularities of the role of things in constituting memory (and the role of memory in constituting things), we argue four points: that relations between things are crucial; that things provide us with markers of time, place, purpose, and identity; that these markers are historically obdurate; and that things actin ways that transcend semiotics. Each of these four—relations, markers, obduracy, and actions—are significant for and constitutive of memory. The argument is thus antirepresentational, suggesting that the world is perfectly capable of representing itself, and that our understanding of the world is immanent in the world and its relations.     

Motivation of software developers in Open Source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel

The motives of 141 contributors to a large Open Source Software (OSS) project (the Linux kernel) was explored with an Internet-based questionnaire study. Measured factors were both derived from discussions within the Linux community as well as from models from social sciences. Participants’ engagement was particularly determined by their identification as a Linux developer, by pragmatic motives to improve own software, and by their tolerance of time investments. Moreover, some of the software development was accomplished by teams. Activities in these teams were particularly determined by participants’ evaluation of the team goals as well as by their perceived indispensability and self-efficacy.     

Old Freedoms and New Technologies: The Evolution of Community Networking

Unparalleled in human experience, the Internet, or simply the Net, is the code word for the technosocial accident that gives large numbers of people the means by which they can speak for themselves in public. This is an ironical reversal of the historical social patterning of asymmetrical, centralizing communicating technologies that have molded all of the social relations of modern society. The problematic for this distributed communication capability will be manifest in struggles around the legitimacy of self-expression, assembly, and privacy, in all of their forms. However, unlike the mass mediated discourse where, as the ''audience'' object, we observed these externalized struggles by a narrow other, encounters with distributed media are palpable and subjective, and will be increasingly played out on the common terrain of local community. In initiating unconditional public access to the Net, community networks, or FreeNets, began the long process of blurring the distinction between the public and private terrain, of undoing that dichotomy that mass media technologies in this century have systematically rebuilt and fortified. Nudging along the process of democratic self-representation is the central issue for the Net, and the epochal project for community networks.     

Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Sociotechnical Approach

The term community is widely and often uncritically used to characterize groupings of people who meet in electronic forums (e-forums). The research reported here shows how the casual use of the term community to characterize these groups can actually undermine their transformation into forms of social organization that are justifiably characterized as communities. This article examines how transforming a group into a community is a major accomplishment that requires special processes and practices. Primary data come from a particular project, the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), that aimed to develop "communities of practice" (CoPs) among high school science and mathematics teachers through an elaborate dedicated web site. We examine participants' behaviors in some of the differently structured forums within the ILF web site. While the project's developers expected CoPs to develop autonomously, there was no evidence of CoP formation in open public online forums. The article contrasts two approaches to building online communities that differ sharply: "IT-led community development" and "IT-supported community development." The experience of the ILF project shows that IT-led strategies community development strategies are much more difficult to make workable than are the "IT-supported" strategies.     

Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Sociotechnical Approach

The term community is widely and often uncritically used to characterize groupings of people who meet in electronic forums (e-forums). The research reported here shows how the casual use of the term community to characterize these groups can actually undermine their transformation into forms of social organization that are justifiably characterized as communities. This article examines how transforming a group into a community is a major accomplishment that requires special processes and practices. Primary data come from a particular project, the Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), that aimed to develop "communities of practice" (CoPs) among high school science and mathematics teachers through an elaborate dedicated web site. We examine participants' behaviors in some of the differently structured forums within the ILF web site. While the project's developers expected CoPs to develop autonomously, there was no evidence of CoP formation in open public online forums. The article contrasts two approaches to building online communities that differ sharply: "IT-led community development" and "IT-supported community development." The experience of the ILF project shows that IT-led strategies community development strategies are much more difficult to make workable than are the "IT-supported" strategies.     

Electronic Records Management and Public Accountability: Beyond an Instrumental Approach

In evaluating government actions, accountability fora depend on public records. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can—depending on how they are used—positively or negatively affect the availability of records for accountability. Dominant trends in the effect of ICTs on records management are (1) the mixing of "on the record" and "off the record" communication, (2) the shift of control over information to the individual, (3) the focus on present rather than on historic information, (4) the interlinking of information managed by several organizations, and (5) the integration of procedures into computer systems. These trends indicate that the introduction of ICTs challenges the existing balance between organizational values (e.g., formality and informality, central control and individual autonomy). Electronic records management is therefore about finding an organizational design that balances values to fit the organization's accountability situation.