Lead: Marcus Foth
- How do residents connect with each other to create and maintain social networks?
- How can technology dbe degisned to neotiate a balance between the opportunitiews of interactive services vs. identity, trust and privacy?
- What is the role of content?
What’s community? Social network, urban village, swarm, neighbourhood, me and my friends… Have something in common?
Shift from the “little boxes” model to personalized social networks: more permeable boundaries…
Urban tribes: swarms of interconnected friends, filling the gap between college and married life, fluidity of social networks, place and proximity matters.
Communicative Ecology
- Discursive layer
- Social layer
- Technology layer
global vs. local; collective vs. individual; online vs. offline
Community as Collective vs. Community as Network
- interest in the community vs. interest in the individual
- community activism vs. personal, social networking
- public vs. private
- many-to-many vs. peer-to-peer switchboard
- formal discussion vs. informal chat
- asynchronous vs. synchronous
- permanent vs. transitory
- hierarchically structured vs. networked to the “edge of chaos”
- discussion board, mailing lists vs. instant messenger email, SMS
- Gemeinschaft vs. Urban Tribe
collective interaction | networked interaction | |
geographically dispersed | online communities | online social networking (e.g. MySpace, Facebook) |
place based | collective interaction for discussion about place | networked interact for sociability in place |
Connectivity does not ensure community. If you build it, they will not necessarily come. On the other hand, social capital rich communities are likely to progress and also to have a preference for “social isolation”.
Readings
Foth, M., González, V. M. & Taylor, W. (2006). “Designing for Place-Based Social Interaction of Urban Residents in México, South Africa and Australia”. In OZCHI 2006 Proceedings, November 20-24. Sydney: CHISIG. Retrieved July 10, 2007 from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00005276/01/5276_1.pdf
Wellman, B. (2001). “Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalyzed Networking”. In International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), 227-252. Oxford: Blackwell.
Aurigi, A. (2006). “New Technologies, Same Dilemmas: Policy and Design Issues for the Augmented City”. In Journal of Urban Technology, 13(3), 5-28. London: Routledge.