iPads, Free Data and Young Peoples’ Rights: Refractions from a Universal Access Model During the Pandemic

The United Nations deemed internet access to be of critical importance for human rights in 2016. In 2020, schools around the world closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools were closed, inequities in internet access gained widespread public attention as many educational opportunities shifted online. Amidst this shift, this paper analyzes an Ontario provincial announcement to provide 21,000 iPads and free data for young people (ages 4-18), during the pandemic. The closure of schools in Ontario, Canada, meant that young people and families who faced technological challenges, such as a lack of devices, stable and affordable internet connections, or sufficient data allowances, could experience barriers to their right to an education. This paper revisits a community informatics (CI) model of internet access, the Access Rainbow, to analyze attempts to operationalize the right to an education through technology in Ontario. In parallel to rights, however, the field of CI faces the ongoing presence of profit-oriented corporations within universal access efforts. This paper argues that socio-technical infrastructural elements of access to the internet became visible through the breakdown of the pandemic. Furthermore, it considers the multi-stakeholder efforts required to implement useful and effective access, where school boards responded in varied ways locally. The paper contributes the concept of refraction to offer continued theorization of a distributive paradigm and a rights-informed approach in community informatics against the backdrop of the pandemic, which could also act as an opening for privatization and disaster capitalism.

Documentation in a community informatics project

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the creation and sharing of information by Bangladeshi women participants in a community informatics project and to assess to what extent the information provided to them meets their short and longer-term needs. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on data collected during a workshop with village women in Dhaka and focus group discussions in rural Bangladesh in March and April 2019. The information continuum model is used as a framework to analyse the data. Findings The study shows that the women document their learning and share it with their families and communities and that they are very conscious of the importance of keeping analogue back-ups of the information provided to them in digital format. They use notebooks to write down information that they find useful and they copy information provided to them on brown paper sheets hung in the village community houses. Practical implications This paper raises questions about how information is communicated to village women, organised and integrated in a community informatics project, and more generally about the suitability and sustainability of providing information in digital formats in a developing country. Originality/value The paper shows how village women participants in a community informatics project in Bangladesh took the initiative to create and preserve the information that was useful to them in analogue formats to remedy the limitations of the digital formats and to keep the information accessible in the longer term.

Empowering Community Water Data Stakeholders

Access to clean water is a critical challenge and opportunity for community-level collaboration. People rely on local water sources, but awareness of water quality and participation in water management is often limited. Lack of community engagement can increase risks of water catastrophes, such as those in Flint, Michigan, and Cape Town, South Africa. We investigated water quality practices in a watershed system serving c.100 000 people in the United States. We identified a range of entities including government and nonprofit citizen groups that gather water quality data. Many of these data are accessible in principle to citizens. However, the data are scattered and diverse; information infrastructures are primitive and not integrated. Water quality data and data practices are hidden in plain sight. Based on fieldwork, we consider sociotechnical courses of action, drawing on best practices in human–computer interaction and community informatics, data and environmental systems management.

Participatory Collaboration Mapping in Malawi: Making Mike’s Community Informatics Idea(l)s Work

In this tribute to Michael Gurstein, we first summarize three of his key concepts: Community Informatics, Effective Use, and Community Innovation. We then apply his ideas to a case on participatory collaboration mapping in Malawi. We end the tribute with a reflection and re-iterating Mike'ss call for Community Informatics research and action to keep meeting.