Empowered Communities: How New Communications Technologies and Applications are Enabling Communities of Influence to Form and Develop
Tunnard, Christoper (Rusty)
2004
- Submitted in partial fulfillment of the degree Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Abstract: A question often being asked in the aftermath of the dot-com boom is: to what extent does the Internet enable communities of influence to form and develop? Governments, NGOs, companies, and individuals are interested in what may prove to be longer-lasting value ... read morethan simply commercial, or 'pre-IPO.' This paper attempts to answer this question by a considered, empirical study of what communities are and what factors or aspects of community development are particularly affected by the Internet. Communities fall, in size and scope, somewhere between individuals and supra-national entities. So, first, some of the literature on 'communities as proto-nations' is reviewed, as looking at nations helps frame subsequent discussions on community. Then, four main elements for community formation and development are examined: identity and culture; communication, networks, and language; visualization; and facilitation of action. Each is discussed in some detail, with citations from the literature, with comments about the relevance of new communications and information technologies, and discussions of relevant examples. Next, a selection of online communities, ranging in size from supra-national (The U.N. Information and Communications Task Force) to sub-national (a group of Italian schools who have joined together to write, edit, and publish a national newspaper) is presented. Each is discussed and looked at for its relevance to community-building and the use of technology to achieve results. A technology review starts with a short description of the collapse of the 'dot-com revolution' and the spectacular declines of some of the world's largest telecommunications and media companies. During this period, it is argued, three of the Internet's ongoing achievements and trends have been obscured: there is sufficient infrastructure in place to allow the Internet to operate cost-effectively and to continue to grow; while the number of users has peaked in the United States and Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa are experiencing strong growth in users and in web sites; and there are a number of new or improving technologies which are making it easier than ever to communicate and form communities of common interest. The paper ends with an analysis of one community against the four main elements of community formation mentioned above. A major conclusion is that, since many of these new technologies and applications (e.g. Instant Messenger, Internet Protocol telephony, Web logs) are being heavily used by children, it is possible to believe that the generation which is currently growing up and is comfortable with the broad array of communications and community-forming technologies, now and soon-to-be available, will have a better chance of using them to positive advantage than those currently in power.read less
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- z029ph15k
- Component ID:
- tufts:UA015.012.DO.00056
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