Documents Of Record /Project Groups /07-08 /Participatory Culture

DANM Project Group

Year: Spring 07 – Winter 08

Faculty: Sharon Daniel

Research Foci: Participatory Culture

Title: “Digital Inclusion”: Creating tools for citizen media activists

Abstract

This project group will engage in both the development of new technologies and community-based media activism in an effort to enable marginalized communities – not traditionally thought of a scholarly or academic to produce and interpret knowledge and represent their own experiences and perspectives using media tools built or adapted for their specific contexts.

This type of research - technological development wedded to social activism - coincides with a growing movement in the academic research community toward “ICT4D” (Information and Communication Technology for Development) or “Digital Inclusion” – terms that describe the goal of the proposed project group – to expand the capabilities of computing and information technologies to better serve the social, political, and economic challenges of underserved communities, with tools that are affordable, accessible, and relevant to the specific context.

For example, last summer, in a series of workshops Professor Daniel ran at cultural centers in two impoverished shantytowns in Buenos Aires, participants used twenty-five dollar “disposable” digital video cameras to document their daily lives. Daniel and DANM graduate student research assistant Michael Dale transformed the “disposable” cameras into re-usable cameras using instructions and free software found on a DIY technology website and developed a web application that allowed participants to edit, tag and publish their video. Participants worked in groups using the free, custom-built, software to edit and organize their video clips. The workshop focused on strategies for collective self-representation and the software was designed specifically to allow the participants to discover relationships and make connections between their personal stories and images.

Ten of our modified cameras are now being distributed by documentary filmmaker Gabriel Stauring to individuals in displaced persons camps in Darfur, Sudan. The opportunity to send the cameras to Darfur prompted an analysis of potential “use scenarios” for the hardware and software in that context, which led to the consideration of a whole new set of hardware and software features that could facilitate “citizen media activists” in a variety of extreme circumstances.

Students – Participation/Preferred background and skills

Students in the project group will work with a local community group that currently operates at the margins of information culture to build and/or annex social, political, and technological infrastructures in order to facilitate their collective self-representation and cultural sustainability. This work will take place under the auspices of collaboration with an area non-profit organization. The community collaboration will provide an opportunity for students to engage in community activism and for the tools they build to be developed through participatory design and testing. Students will also undertake a critical examination of the notions of “inclusion” and “development” that will be informed by the practical application of their research.

Students with a practical background in community studies, community media, computer programming, basic electronics, web design and publishing, or ethnography are preferred but all students with an interest in the goals of the project group are welcome.

Potential forms/venues for publication/exhibition

The research pursued in this project group will be tested in collaboration with a local community group and designed to be adapted for a variety of contexts. Exhibitions or public screenings of the results of the local community collaboration(s) will be determined in consultation with the participating community group(s) based on their desired target venues and audiences. There are also a number of international Digital Arts Festivals Conferences and publications, which would provide likely venues – such as ISEA 08 and Leonardo. Other possible venues for publication of related theoretical research include journals such as Public Culture and Social Text.