Empowerment in the Context of Community Informatics
Matthew Arnold, Larry Stillman · 2009
Abstract: In this paper we tackle the theme of the conference head-on through addressing five questions. 1. What is power? 2. What is empowerment? 3. In what ways is it exercised? 4. How does all of this pertain to communities? 5. How does all of this pertain to Community Informatics? The first three questions are addressed through reference to well known propositions drawn from social theory, and the last two through a content analysis meta-study of the treatment of power and empowerment in the abstracts of papers submitted to the 2009 Prato Community Informatics Conference. If one assumes that the abstracts submitted to this conference provide a representation of power and empowerment in relation to Community Informatics, one may draw a number of conclusions in relation to the above 5 questions. These conclusions are explicated in the paper.