Exploring Facets of Community
François Bar, Michael L. Best · Information Technologies and International Development · 2011
The current issue of ITID was planned as a general issue, one that would follow on the publication of several special issues over the past year. But while the four articles we bring you here came to us independently, they present nicely complementary approaches to a common theme—community. They analyze the impact of Mexico’s Digital Community Centers, explore the visions of community underlying much of the community informatics literature, report on Australian institutions’ efforts to empower Indigenous communities through knowledge systems, and review two recent books on African communities’ uses of mobile phones. Together, they remind us that community is an important concept articulating much of our work on information technology and development, and they challenge us to give critical attention to its multi-faceted meanings.