Radio B-92 in Belgrade Harnesses the Power of a Media Activist Community During the War to Keep Broadcasting Despite Terrestrial Ban

During the 1999 war between NATO and the former Yugoslavia, an opposition radio station in Belgrade used the Internet to continue to disseminate news and music despite having their terrestrial transmitting equipment confiscated by Serbian authorities. This article will discuss how Radio B-92 was able to do this through the close coordination of radio station staff in Serbia and their partners from within the European media activist community. This article will begin by setting the activities of Radio B-92 and its partners during the Spring of 1999 in a historical context by discussing the use of broadcast and other media during the wars and conflicts of the past.

Reinforcing and Opening Communities through Innovative Technologies

The aim of the Campiello1 research project (Esprit Long Term Research #25572) is to promote and sustain the meeting of inhabitants and tourists in historical cities of art and culture. This overall objective is undertaken in two main steps: reinforcing the community bounds via collective participation in both creating community knowledge and optimizing access to it. Once the local community’s sense of belonging has been reinforced, sharing its knowledge with outside people will become more natural. In this paper first we present the various technological aspects, as well as where and how innovative technology can help local communities. Then we present the context of experimentation, future plans and current achievements in one of the two project settings: Venice.

Community Impact of Telebased Information Centers

Telebased information community centers or just telecenters have been seen as the killer application to empower local communities in developed and developing countries to meet the challenges of the information society. The point of departure has been different in various parts of the world, and a number of quite diverse models for development of telebased information centers have been applied. While centers in developed countries, with an almost universal coverage of telephony services, have been focussed on enhancing IT capabilities and access to IT-based communication services, developing countries have also focussed on provision of basic telephony. This chapter presents the approaches taken in Scandinavia, Hungary, Western Australia and Ghana in order to reach these objectives, and discusses the experiences with the different models and the national strategies used for setting up telebased information centers with special attention to their applicability in developing countries.

Community Participation in the Design of the Seattle Public Schools' Budget Builder Web Site

This chapter provides a case study of the development of an Internet-based budgeting tool for the Seattle Public Schools, known as the Budget Builder. In particular, I describe the ways in which community participation affected the design and final outcome of the system. The Budget Builder project was unusual for a technical project because of its major focus on community participation. Although participation was stymied to some extent, the project can be seen as a success for community access. In the case study, I summarize the use of the Budget Builder over its first two years; describe the community participation and user input present in the design process; examine the social structure surrounding the Budget Builder, especially the division of power among the three main groups working on the project, and how those power relationships affected the final version of the project; and discuss some technical issues that appeared during the course of the project.

Linking Communities to Global Policymaking

The 1990s have been marked by extraordinary changes in many of the fundamental elements of human existence, among the most powerful, the introduction of a global networking system. Indeed, it is difficult to consider thoughtfully any major aspect of our socio-economic-political circumstances, current and future, that are not in some way profoundly affected by this revolution. For those of us with Internet service, even a few keystrokes on a laptop computer can now put us in touch with friends, family, colleagues, or strangers almost anywhere in the world, certainly on all seven continents including Antarctica. Business can be conducted, money transferred, medical records evaluated, books/papers jointly written and edited, inventions created, ideas shared. The unprecedented ease and speed of access to knowledge and experience, and increasingly commerce, is at the heart of the promise of the new technologies for cyberconnectivity. Communities in all parts of the world are finding ways to make the Internet serve them, and becoming energized, organized and activated as a result. Two factors, however, contribute to a sobering backdrop that frames further exploration of these exciting new frontiers. First, access to the underlying technologies is severely constrained in developing countries, and in poorer communities of industrialized countries. Differential access to key resources, such as capital, electricity, telephone service, exacerbates gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Furthermore, even for those who gain basic access, other constraints, such as predominance of “colonial” languages, limit their ability to take advantage of opportunities offered by the technology. Second, the glitter of cybertechnology tends to divert us from addressing broader problems of inequities in social and economic development, and their associated ecological consequences. These have been sharply documented in the UNDP Human Development Report Series. (The most recent of these 10 annual Human Development Reports, that of July 1999, can be found at: http://www.undp.org/hdro/99.htm.) This chapter presents the results of an experiment to bring together these two contemporary forces — the Internet explosion, and a sense of growing inequality in economic and political power — to create a new channel into global decision making fora, particularly for communities that seem increasingly to be left behind. The context for this effort was the United Nations, and a series of global conferences that focused attention on the major social, environmental, and economic issues of our time. The objective was to explore ways to use new electronic networking to link communities around the world more directly to top level decision makers.

Virtual Communities, Real Struggles

There is a technology that was said to have the “power to disband armies, to cashier presidents, to create a whole new democratic world — democratic in ways never before imagined, even in America” (From Daniel Boorstin’s The Republic of Technology, cited in Winner, 1996, p.20). This technology was none other than television, whose potential for low-density mental reformatting is today more widely recognised than its affinity with democracy — in America as elsewhere. In fact, “Dreams of instant liberation from centralised social control have accompanied virtually every important new technological system introduced during the past century and a half” (Winner, 1986, pp.95-96). Collective memory is short, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now on the leading float of the technophile carnival. For many, the new technological artefacts promise to end the alienation of labour and industrial apocalypse, to leapfrog the so-called Third World into post-industrial informationalism, and to cast the foundations of slave-less, gender-balanced Athenian democracy (see notably Cairncross, 1997; Burton, 1997; Negroponte, 1995; Bissio, 1996; Annis, 1991; Lipnack and Stamps, 1986). Yet, beyond the hype of the so-called Information Revolution, ICTs are having other implications, more tuned to neo-liberal substance than classical utopia. Those implications call for a critical political economic analysis and precocious system planning and deployment. On the one hand, this chapter compares the overall political impact of the technology in relation to the immediate advantages it is said to confer. On the other hand, the analysis shows that the development and implementation of ICTs, far from serving democracy, does in fact consolidate social injustice through ideological homogenisation, restrictive controls, and an enhanced capacity for surveillance. In search of alternatives, the last section of the chapter focuses on the technological conditions and political strategies through which information systems could be more relevant to progressive social forces and grassroots emancipation.2 A matrix of relevant political issues is proposed in an effort to construct strategies of progressive community networking.

Internet-Based Neighborhood Information Systems

This verse comes from a poem read by one of the key figures in the development of the Internet at a recent symposium held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first successful transmission of digital bits from one computer to another, which ushered in the era of computer networks (Kaplan, September 6, 1999). Perhaps not unexpectedly, participants in this commemorative event reflected on the rapid development of networking and what we today call the Internet and predicted its ubiquity in everyday life, likening it to electricity. Obviously, however, we are not quite there yet. Recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce suggest that, despite rapidly increasing rates of computer ownership and Internet access in the United States, there are still many people who have been left out of the information revolution. Researchers found that Internet access is highly correlated with income, education level and race, leading them to conclude: The information ‘haves’ have dramatically outpaced the information ‘have nots’ in their access to electronic services. As a result, the gap between these groups — the digital divide — has grown over time. (McConnaughey et al., 1999, p. 88)

ICT and Local Governance

Argentina is slowly walking along the path of ICT uses for social and civic purposes. Local governments and community organisations are understanding the potential advantages of Community Informatics, and facing a myriad of prejudices and material obstacles to implement it. This chapter shows the first results of a three-year research on the subject of information technology, local governance, and community networks in the City of Buenos Aires. It deals with two intimately interrelated issues: a) Local government’s use of ICT for local management and communication with citizens: results and obstacles. The government is opening slowly to the use of ICT to decentralise urban functions, increase the flow of horizontal institutional information, update urban management, inform the citizens, and increase public participation in urban affairs. However, prejudices, fear of technology, and above all a resilient institutional culture are still considerable obstacles for informatization. The paper surveys the technological changes implemented by the Government of Buenos Aires City and studies the social actors who were responsible for them, as well as the social processes that made them possible, as a necessary framework to understand the slow development of electronic community networks. b) Emerging Electronic Community Networks. From 1997 onwards, they have multiplied in various sectors: education, culture, community health and wellness, citizens’ rights, participation in urban affairs. The chapter studies the local particularities of community, focusing on the differences between large and small community organisations, and their conceptions of time and space, linked to the use of on-line resources. It finishes by analysing the link between the local governmental context referring the use of ICT and the slow emergence of electronic community networks.

New Communities and New Community Networks

Global forces—economic, political and technological — threaten communities in many ways. On the one hand, citizens may feel like they’re part of an undifferentiated crowd with no personal identity. On the other hand, they may feel isolated and alone, disconnected from the human community. In either case, people—especially those with fewer economic resources—feel that they have little control over their future. The consequences of powerlessness, real or perceived, transcend the individual; society as a whole suffers, for it is deprived of social intelligence and energy which could be tapped for the amelioration of social and other problems. As a matter of fact, many of this century’s most pressing issues—the environment, women’s issues, sexual identity, and others—have been brought to the fore through the efforts of citizens (Habermas, 1996). Disempowering the individual and the community was probably not part of a master plan any more than degrading the environment was. Yet in many ways this is what has happened. Rebuilding the community—like cleaning up toxic dumps or reclaiming buried streams—will be a long process that will require diligence and patience. Rebuilding—and redefining—the community, therefore, is not optional, nor is it a luxury. It is at the core of our humanity; rebuilding it is our most pressing concern. Geographically based communities are a natural focus for addressing many of today’s problems. For one thing, many current problems—poverty, crime, unemployment, drug use, and many others—are concentrated in geographic communities. These problems are manifest in the community and are best examined and addressed by the community. Communities are also a familiar and natural unit. Smaller units can be clannish, unrepresentative, and powerless, while larger units are often too anonymous and unwieldy. The old concept of community, however, is obsolete in many ways and needs to be updated to meet today’s challenges. The old or “traditional” community was often exclusive, inflexible, isolated, immutable, monolithic, and homogeneous. Moreover, increased mobility coupled with widespread use of communication systems is de-emphasizing geography as the sole orienting factor in a “community.” And, although problems may be manifested in specific geographic communities, the contributing factors of the problem may exist in New York, London, Tokyo, or other nodes in today’s “Network Society” (Castells, 1996). A new community—one that is inclusive, fundamentally devoted to democratic problemsolving, outer-directed as well as inner-directed—needs to be fashioned from the remnants of the old community.

Differential IT Access and Use Patterns in Rural and Small-Town Atlantic Canada

Popular press and government rhetoric suggest that there has been steady progress in the extent to which individuals, households, businesses, organizations, and communities are using the Internet as part of their daily lives (Bruce, 1998, 1997). However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. In this chapter I argue that there has been slow and uneven penetration of Internet use in rural and small-town communities in Atlantic Canada, despite the best efforts of policies and programs. Drawing on evidence from a recent Internet use survey, suggestions are made for improving the performance of policies and programs aimed at increasing Internet access and use. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an empirical overview of differential Internet access and use patterns, using data collected from a January 1998 survey (Jordan, 1998; Bruce and Gadsden, 1999) of 1501 households in 20 different Atlantic Canadian communities grouped into five distinct “community categories.” (Reimer, 1997a, 1997b) Characteristics of users for purposes of this analysis include age, gender, household income, educational attainment, and employment status. This chapter also explores the extent to which Atlantic Canadians have taken formal or informal courses or training programs related to information technology between 1993 and 1998.