<h2 style="text-align:center;">Research informing practice: toward effective engagement in community ICT in New Zealand</h2>
<p style="text-align:center;">Barbara Craig<br>
Victoria University, Wellington</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">Jocelyn Williams, PhD<br>
Unitec Institute of Technology</p>
<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p>
<p>New Zealand's
Computers in Homes (CIH), a free home internet scheme, has been researched
since its inception in 2000 by the authors of this paper in separate studies
using different methodologies. This paper traces the inter-relationship
between the research findings over the course of a decade and the evolution of
CIH practice in low-income communities, in turn reflecting on a shift in
epistemology and thus research design for two new studies in their early
stages. One, a large-scale study, is being conducted at a national level, and
includes every new participant in the CIH scheme throughout the country using
an online survey to provide baseline data. A second small-scale case study is
being conducted in one urban CIH primary school community that has recently
launched the scheme for 31 of its families. It aims to further explore
previous findings about the relationship between social support and community
internet, by assessing the value of social media for parents in building a
sense of community belonging. In this article we also address the potential
for social media to engage CIH participants in making sense of their own
internet experience and thus in owning their own research. We suggest the
use of social media in this way may challenge the more traditional ideas and
power relations inherent in the researcher-participant relationship in community
ICT research.</p>
<p><strong>Introduction</strong></p>
<p>In
this article we bring together the interdisciplinary perspectives of
communication studies and education to demonstrate the multiple ways in which
our research on Computers in Homes (CIH) in New Zealand is complementing the
operational work of this community ICT scheme as its practice evolves to
encompass social media use by the scheme participants. We draw on the growing
community informatics literature, and also literature relating to community,
social cohesion, and participatory research, as well as referring to our
research on CIH since the early 2000s to propose that the CIH model offers an
effective intersection between research and practice in the pursuit of a more
just society.</p>
<p>In
its philosophy and values CIH aims to strengthen low-decile communities to be
able to take up opportunities for education and advancement, not only through
the provision of ICT hardware but also based on the understanding that the
social setting is an important component of successful community internet
implementation. The growing success of CIH, now established in over 200<a
href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference><span
class=MsoFootnoteReference>[1]</a> communities
throughout New Zealand (Williams, 2009, p. 284), in many ways aligns with
emerging theory that grass roots ownership of community internet practice is desirable
for its sustainability (Gaved & Anderson, 2006; Loader & Keeble,
2004). This paper goes further in arguing the case for grass roots ownership
of the research.</p>
<p><strong>Background</strong></p>
<p>The
CIH scheme was the brainchild of the non-profit 2020 Communications Trust,
founded in New Zealand's capital city Wellington in 1996, which already had an
established history of successful community-based ICT projects (Newman, 2008;
Zwimpfer, 2010). The concept of the 2020 Communications Trust was "to promote
the Info City vision" (Wellington City Council, 1996, p. 3), a strategy
sufficiently forward-thinking to come to the attention of the Harvard Business
School. At the time Sid Huff noted</p>
<p class=Quotation style='margin-top:12.0pt;margin-right:51.95pt;margin-bottom:
10.0pt;margin-left:.25in;text-align:justify'><i>As a
central component of its Vision 2020 strategy, the city of Wellington, New
Zealand has developed preliminary plans to transform itself into a "wired
city." The overarching project was called Info City. Info City actually
consisted of a collection of sub-projects, each focusing on a different way in
which the city could promote and foster the use of information technology to
help move toward the "2020 Vision". (Huff, 1996)</i></p>
<p>Info City strategies
acknowledged the important link between community and economic development and
key to this was the establishment of Citylink, a private company set up to open
a high bandwidth, low-cost, fibre network to the city across the trolleybus
wires (Newman, 2008). The ongoing aim of the 2020 Communications Trust is "to
promote dialogue and understanding through local action" (2020 Communications
Trust, 2009) to provide leadership in ICT and deliver programmes that address
issues of digital literacy, skills and inclusion, through partnerships with
national and local government agencies and businesses to achieve funding for
the activities of the non-profit organisation. The Trust identifies gaps in
provision to achieve digital inclusion in NZ communities, devises possible
approaches and then seeks to partner with other agents to take action.
Computers in Homes (CIH) is an important example of partnership projects within
the purview of the 2020 Trust.</p>
<p>Some of the earliest
CIH project sites were part of an experimental community network project called
Smart Newtown funded by the local city council. Smart Newtown was an Info City
sub-project, based loosely on the Blacksburg Electronic Village community
computer network project in Blacksburg, Virginia that from 1993-2000 enabled 80
percent of residents to access the Internet (Kavanauagh & Patterson, 2002;
Kavanaugh, Kim, Perez-Quinones, Schmitz, & Isenhour, 2008). Newtown, an
inner city Wellington suburb on the trolleybus routes, was connected to
Citylink and became the local community where the relationship between
communication, social capital and civic engagement was to be investigated with
a pilot CIH project. In addition to establishing CIH in the local schools,
Smart Newtown provided free internet access and IT training in community
centres to residents, and all local businesses were given a web presence. </p>
<p>Other early CIH
projects related to the Ministry of Education's call at that time for research
into home/school/community partnerships. Pilot CIH projects were supported by
the Ministry of Education and set up in urban low income communities (Cannon's
Creek in Wellington, and Panmure Bridge, in New Zealand's largest city,
Auckland). These projects set up in 2000 were concerned with educational
outcomes, in particular through getting parents inside the school gates,
involved in the life of the school, and providing them with skills to help
their children with their school work, then measuring changes such as numbers
of parent helpers at school events and attendance at parent-teacher
interviews. In the Flaxmere project, "a series of innovations relating to
improving home-school relations within and between the five Flaxmere schools"
(Clinton, Hattie, & Dixon, 2007) in a smaller provincial city in the North
Island of New Zealand, CIH was the most visible and successful initiative.
Also fully funded by the Ministry of Education, the Flaxmere project experimented
with a range of strategies such as homework centres and home-school liaison
persons (Perry, 2004) alongside CIH to improve the relations of the five local
schools with their communities and to engage parents more fully with their
children's learning (Clinton, et al., 2007). </p>
<p>A final project from
the early years, referred to colloquially as 'the Tuhoe CIH', was the first to
be launched in a rural New Zealand community, and the first to be set up at the
request of the community itself. The Tuhoe, an indigenous Maori <i>iwi</i>
(tribe) with15 schools governed by their own educational authority, partnered
with the 2020 Communications Trust to work in their schools. The Tuhoe
('Children of the Mist') live in communities sprinkled throughout a remote,
rural mountainous area but with many tribal members also dispersed globally and
throughout other New Zealand communities. These local communities are
economically depressed and geographically isolated but with a strong <i>iwi</i>
identity and culture. Through a partnership with CIH and the 2020
Communications Trust, and other partnerships with government and universities,
they have installed wireless internet across the valleys, put internet access
into homes, videoconferencing into schools and set up a digital gateway to communicate
with dispersed tribal members and record their collective history. CIH in this
case was about community development and how the internet can be used for
cultural and language preservation and <i>iwi</i> communication (Stillman &
Craig, 2006).</p>
<p><strong>Working with CIH communities</strong></p>
<p>What did these early
CIH communities have in common? They featured poor literacy, low educational
attainment, little participation in their children's education, low confidence,
a history of failure, and more features to be detailed below. Thus in terms of
community development, the CIH scheme sought to build community around the life
of the school, providing parents with new opportunities to pursue their own
dreams as well as giving them the tools to support their children through their
educational careers. Early interviews with parents at Cannon's Creek School
(Wellington) revealed difficulties for them in becoming involved in their
children's education because of a lack of confidence, negative attitudes based
on past experiences, and limited understanding of what learning is about
(Craig, 2004). This reflects the socio-economic make-up of this community
where the unemployment rate is currently 11.3% compared to 5.2 % across the
wider Wellington city region and where 39.4% have no educational
qualifications compared to 19.8% in the region as a whole (Statistics New
Zealand, 2006b). By the end of the CIH project parents commented on spending
more time with their children, on a sense of connectedness with the school,
that they had been reminded of the importance of schooling, and that they had
not really understood at first how poor their children's achievement had been
(Clinton, et al., 2007).</p>
<p>These communities in
which the early CIH projects were established were also characterised by their
social make-up, predominantly low-income and low-employment, and high minority
ethnic populations. CIH works with those schools that have the
highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities<a
href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class=MsoFootnoteReference><span
class=MsoFootnoteReference>[2]</a>. Communities
included indigenous Maori who had moved from their traditional communities to
the cities some generations back, Pasifika peoples who had migrated from the
Pacific islands in search of work, and other more recent immigrant and refugee
groups. Through providing a home computer and training adults to use the
internet, CIH encourages participants to use online communication to bolster
their connections and support networks within their immediate communities. It
also encourages maintenance of identity, language and culture through e-mail
and other forms of connecting online with extended family scattered around the
globe. The project has also sought to encourage participants to form social
networks outside the community, joining online communities that share interests
and values. Training provided to the parents before they take their computers
home demonstrates how to access the vast repositories of government, health,
and social services information and resources that can be found online that can
help migrant or isolated communities understand their rights as citizens. </p>
<p>CIH aims "to provide
all New Zealand families who are socially and economically disadvantaged with a
computer, an internet connection, relevant training and technical support"
("Computers in Homes ", 2011, 'About CIH' page, ¶2) for a cost of $50
per family. In practice, this means CIH works with schools to provide a group
of families – usually 25 at one time – with a refurbished desktop computer,
free broadband internet for six months, weekly two hour training sessions for
ten weeks, and technical support provided by the school with paid technicians
as needed. Software includes Windows XP, Office 2007, Antivirus and Spyware,
Adobe Reader, Flashplayer, Shockwave and Java, and desktop shortcuts to internet
safety and learning sites. </p>
<p>Core to CIH
philosophy is community ownership, an understanding that aligned perfectly
with the New Zealand government's move towards a Digital Strategy (Ministry of
Economic Development et al., 2004) formally released in 2007 (New Zealand
Government - Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, 2007) and
expressed earlier in milestone strategy documents such as Connecting
Communities (Department of Internal Affairs et al., 2002) with its explicit
emphasis on partnership, community initiative, and government funding
"kick-starting projects that the community can own, and ...in the long term ...
[be] funded by non-government sources" (p. 8). Using ICTs to help CIH
communities achieve social, economic and cultural goals begins with local
affirmation that the community is ready to mobilise (Williams, 2010b) and
involve existing community resources and connections in achieving social
inclusion. The social inclusion aim was explicit in one community case study
setting (Williams, 2009) where an agency involved in implementing the scheme,
Housing New Zealand, viewed CIH as "one tactic in a larger strategy aimed at
overcoming neighbourhood social exclusion" (ibid., p. 98), and by CIH itself as
a way to "generate pride in community and neighbourhood" (ibid., p. 291). In
this way CIH is seen by providers as having an important role to play in
facilitating social inclusion. Our research suggests there may be a positive
relationship between free home internet access and social cohesion (Williams,
2010b). In the community case study cited above, where internet uptake was
more successful and sustained, "the success of the internet intervention ...
appears related to the fact that it was 'bedded in' to a fertile social context
that helped it flourish and in turn strengthen social ties" (Williams, 2009, p.
234).</p>
<p><strong>Community internet literature</strong></p>
<p>Community is a
slippery term, described as "a polymorphous folk notion... of little use"
(Postill, 2008, p. 416) and "contested in the eyes of academics" (Loader &
Keeble, 2004, p. 4). Given that the research setting explored in this article,
Computers in Homes, is based in geographical areas associated with primary
schools, our approach is to understand community as an important "intermediate
space" (ibid.) between the family and larger social structures, that fosters
opportunities. Further, to avoid the inherent ambiguity of the term and
following Postill (2008) who favours Bourdieu's concept of a social "field"
(Williams, 2009, p. 51), we conceive of community as a "field of residential
affairs" (Postill, 2008, p. 418) where associations of individuals share some
interests and form networks of relationships. While diffuse networks of online
community, facilitated by personal internet and social media, now commonly
overlay the web of interpersonal relationships in a local neighbourhood
grouping, the starting point for us is the locality. Thus 'community' for our
purposes is a group of people living in a defined geographical area who define
themselves as part of a community; it is a symbolic construct that is an
outcome of what those people do together. The widely cited research and claims
of Robert Putnam that communities are in decline because of eroding social
capital (Putnam, 2000), a process he attributes in part to increased media
consumption at home, imply that determined efforts are needed to re-build this
intermediate space where families learn to deal with the larger social
structures of education, government, and the workplace. This is the space in
which CIH works to facilitate a bridge between the disenfranchised and the
cultural capital (Reed-Danahay, 2004) they have not yet been able to acquire.</p>
<p>In the decade between
the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, during which time CIH was blazing its own
innovative trail in New Zealand, opinion was divided on the subject of whether
the internet can make communities stronger (Pigg & Crank, 2004). This was
because, on the one hand, "considerable rhetoric ... exists regarding the
potential of modern information and communications technology (ICT) to affect
the development of social capital in positive ways" (ibid., p. 59), and
community internet initiatives are said to "increase productivity across our
economy" (New Zealand Government - Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology, 2008, 'High-value economy' section). Thus individuals who do not
use computers in the workplace may be economically disadvantaged (Haisken-DeNew
& D'Ambrosio, 2003). However some early internet research suggested that the
internet might in fact have a negative effect on social involvement (Kraut et
al., 1998; Nie & Erbring, 2000); other studies found that the more people
use the internet, the less contact they have with their social environment (Nie
& Erbring, 2000) and even that </p>
<p>People who use e-mail
heavily have weaker social relationships than those who do not ...and... people who
use the internet heavily report spending less time communicating with their
families.(Kiesler et al., 2001, p. 4)</p>
<p>Such assertions about
the internet eroding social relationships are less relevant now that the
technologies of online social networking have become increasingly mainstream.
More recent research suggests that multiple media channels including the
internet, available to individuals in family settings, are facilitating
communication and kinship (Kennedy & Wellman, 2007), and "the evidence
suggests that the internet is ... slowly building local social networks"
(Hampton, 2007, p. 739). Findings in one of the CIH studies we have completed
in New Zealand aligns with this evidence. Results in 2003 – 2005 longitudinal
urban case studies imply that existing social networks in a community where a
free home internet scheme is implemented (Williams, 2010a) have an important
role to play in successful internet uptake. Additionally the combination of
somewhat strong social cohesion that already exists, plus the motivating and
mobilising effect of the free internet scheme, may create further social
cohesion (ibid.). These findings echo Hampton (2007) who stresses that
positive social outcomes for internet use occur "in those neighbourhoods where
context favours local tie formation" (ibid., p. 739). In other words where
the neighbourhood already has an interest in building community, the internet facilitates
the building of local social ties. </p>
<p>A distinct shift in
thinking occurred by the mid-2000s so that the digital divide began to be seen
as an issue with far more complexity than simple internet access (Afnan-Manns
& Dorr, 2002; Crump & McIlroy, 2003; Davison & Cotten, 2003;
DiMaggio, Hargittai, Celeste, & Shafer, 2004; Fragoso, 2003; Merkel, 2003;
Mossberger, Tolbert, & Stansbury, 2003), and that it needed to be reframed
as a <i>social development</i> challenge encompassing people's ability to make
use of technology (Warschauer, 2003). Technology education schemes such as
Computers in Homes and others (Eubanks, 2007) respond to this issue through a
social constructivist approach. For CIH, this means families, and in
particular the adults, acquire IT skills and confidence in collaboration with
those they know in social settings. Furthermore "we do not construct our
interpretations in isolation but against a backdrop of shared understandings,
practices...[and] language" (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 197). In parallel
with this shift in thinking about the digital divide, the authors have focused
more intently on the role played by the social context inherent in CIH practice
as well as ways to augment it.</p>
<p><strong>The social dimension of Computers in Homes</strong></p>
<p>From the scheme's
inception around 2000 CIH has employed socialisation tactics to build a sense
of group identity and support. Perhaps the most obvious tactic used to
establish and embed a social dimension among the CIH group is the initial
compulsory IT training held at the school over the course of ten weeks. During
this time the parents meet weekly for two hour classes which are highly social
by their nature and include time for chatting over supper in the staffroom, and
relationship building in general. Then there are the celebratory 'graduations'
at which the parents are awarded a certificate showing they have completed
their training, the computers are given to them, and they are recognised by
their families and the community at large for their achievement. Additionally
CIH requires the host school to organise regular family gatherings after the
parents have 'graduated' and taken their computer home that bring the learning
community together for peer support. At these meetings, time is given for
discussion of how the home internet experience is going, what issues may have
arisen, and what difference internet at home is making to family life. Peer
mentoring, through which more confident adults in the group make themselves
available to guide others who are uncertain, is also a feature of the scheme.
Careful identification of existing social networks and assessment of social
cohesion in order to identify leaders and confident individuals may therefore
favour more successful and sustainable internet use, which in turn may relate
to improved social cohesion (Williams, 2010a). </p>
<p>Early research among
CIH families in the pilot schemes revealed how parents used online networking
to find virtual support for them and their families (Craig, 2001).
Instruction in the use of chat sessions and interacting with online support
groups was not included in the training provided to participants, but they
discovered such tools in playing around on the internet at home and shared them
very quickly among the families. Virtual community became a powerful tool for
these parents. Social circumstances in these communities made it difficult to
maintain face-to-face support networks, especially crime, and cultural factors
such as women not venturing out unaccompanied were some of the barriers to the
formation of local support groups. Mothers in local communities formed closed
chat rooms so that they could connect up in the evenings and share stories
about their children, their progress at school, and how other parents dealt
with problems. Others joined spiritual networks, various health-related
support groups and indigenous rights groups. Early participants used forms of
text based digital applications such as chat rooms to communicate and interact
with others inside and outside of their local community. The newest online
genre of everyday interaction, blogs (Hookway, 2008), has been credited with
the power to bring about social change as a new genre of participatory
journalism (Morozov, 2009) and being able to create new forms of community.
Most recently this has been demonstrated in the discussion of the role of
social media in reporting on the New Zealand and Japanese earthquakes as they
happened and by those who witnessed the events and with the role of such media
in current citizen protest movements in the Middle East (Coll, 2011).</p>
<p>Social media such as
blogs are appearing to transform information exchange among internet users
(Morozov, 2009). It makes the creation and posting of content possible (Bruns,
2007) that has been generated by the individual internet user in a
participatory and collaborative way. Personal multimedia content can be posted
to a blog or wiki or collaborative Web 2.0 project on a site accessible to a
selected group of users who can add their own content (Kaplan & Haenlein,
2010). Thus the possibilities for CIH participants to share and interact
through social media go well beyond what could be communicated and accomplished
in the earlier chat room text-based exchanges, and provide another means of
cementing community cohesion, and sustaining connections made at face-to-face
community events such as meetings and celebrations that bring families
together.</p>
<p><strong>Research informing practice in Computers in Homes</strong></p>
<p>The CIH research
approach has been revisited over the years to try out different strategies to
address two important questions about conducting research within a framework of
transformative praxis. First the question of the relationship between the
outside researcher and the inside practitioner, of how to deal with the very
real of issues of power and positioning given the differences in background and
communities of origin of the researcher and the researched. What role should
the researcher play in the transformation of the community of the 'other'?
Second, what kind of 'research capabilities' (Hurtig, 2008) can be handed over
to participants, through the research process and perhaps also through
participatory education, so that they can better understand and change their
lived conditions? In the early years of the project researchers sought to deal
with these issues through collaborative engagement with participants. In
practice this took the form of building rapport through conversations and
interviews, and adapting the scheme to better meet local needs. Ten years on,
the project is experimenting with putting the tools of social media, in
particular blogs, into the hands of the participants to capture their own
stories as a new way of recording lived experiences and constructing new
identity and community. CIH research has all along focused on utilising
methods that would empower the participants to imagine new possibilities for
themselves and their communities. We now turn to a review of the ways in which
research and practice have intersected over the course of more than a decade of
CIH implementation.</p>
<p><strong>A participatory action research model: The early pilot projects</strong></p>
<p>The approach taken in
the early years of the project was adapted from a participatory action research
framework, with each data collection phase informing the next cycle of project
development (Stillman, 2005; Stoecker, 2005). Evaluation approaches and
methods had to be flexible and adaptable (Morell, 2010) and responsive to the
local community as well as appropriate to the local context (Bishop, 1996;
Smith, 1999). Research also needed to direct the ongoing development of the
project as well as inform the 2020 Trust (2020 Communications Trust, 2002)
about participant perspectives on the role of ICTs in community development.
The core operating principle of the 2020 Communications Trust is that it will
not work with any group on any ICT intervention unless there is a local
champion who 'initiates' the approach to the Trust and progresses the project
locally. Finally, research was a means of reporting to funding bodies on the
outcomes for both participants and the community (Craig, 2010). </p>
<p>At the beginning of
CIH in 2000 the research approach was participatory, based on intensive
interviews conducted in participants' homes to gather data on the experiences
of families with the internet and a home computer. These stories were told to
the researchers, transcribed and analysed. More informal feedback came through
issues raised or ideas shared by participants in emails, at training and
meetings, or impromptu speeches made at graduation ceremonies. Researchers
attended as many informal community gatherings as possible and took field notes
to record such conversations that were project-related. Through such stories
and feedback from the participants the scheme started to take the form known as
Computers in Homes today. From the outset the intent was to work at the
grassroots level in further shaping of the project to fit it to local needs, to
have it owned by the community and responsive to local cultural and indigenous
concerns.</p>
<p>One university
researcher (with an educational and ethnographic research background) and the
2020 Communications Trust Chairperson (with an educational background and
years of classroom teaching) jointly conducted the research in the two initial
pilot communities of Cannons Creek and Panmure Bridge (2020 Communications
Trust, 2002). Participants were interviewed in their homes at the time of
registering interest in the programme, at the end of the ten weeks training and
one year later at which time they had had access to a computer and internet in
the home for 18 months. The researchers organised the regular participant
meetings at the school that they recorded and monitored as focus group
discussions. The school principal kept a record of e-mail communications
between family and school as well as a database of pre- and post-achievement
scores of the children from the participating families.</p>
<p>Feedback from
participants through this participatory research process did help modify the
programme to fit the community. Many recounted very similar negative
experiences of their own schooling that still trouble them today with the
result that they are reluctant to go through any school gate as adults or as
parents. Early interviews with the principals of these two pilot schools
revealed that their hoped-for outcomes from this project were increased
home-school communication (through e-mail) and greater participation by the
parents in the wider life of the school, which would in turn benefit the
children's learning. Getting the participants through the school gates was
achieved by holding project meetings in the school in a relaxed environment
with shared food and a babysitter provided for the children. The training also
took place in the school in a designated training suite funded by CIH that
would remain available to the community beyond the project term. Both the
content and the measured pace of training took cognisance of the fear many
participants had about any classroom experience.</p>
<p>A key theme that
emerged from the interviews with parents at the end of the project was the
confidence they had gained as learners. Poor adult literacy skills precluded
many parents of the children at school from taking part in their children's education
and in events in their immediate community. Literacy was as much a barrier to
full participation in the social and economic benefits of life in these
communities as was the lack of access and skills to use a computer and the
internet. Addressing this literacy problem also led to the development of an
online adult literacy training programme delivered in the home with a tutor and
completing online homework tasks (Craig, 2004). Learning online, at home and
working from a screen was the crucial motivating factor for these learners to
complete this literacy course. From these first families a key outcome was an
understanding of the close relationship between digital literacy (learning to
use a computer) and literacy, and that a home computer could motivate adults to
improve their basic literacy skills. This has since been borne out by a New
Zealand report<a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span
class=MsoFootnoteReference><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[3]</a>that
explores a range of factors associated with English literacy and numeracy among
people aged 25-65 (Lane, 2010) which finds that computer use was strongly
associated with higher literacy and numeracy, especially with intensive and
extensive reading, writing and numeracy practices (ibid.). Home computer use is
associated with greater involvement in personal literacy activities (ibid.).</p>
<p>Feedback from these
first CIH participants about their experiences and their dreams for their
futures provided the blueprint for the CIH scheme that has been continually
reassessed, given the way other communities over the years such as the Tuhoe
and Flaxmere groups have engaged with the concept. It also helped shape the
research agenda, suggesting social, educational and economic outcomes to
measure.</p>
<p><strong>Participatory research and community action</strong></p>
<p>The gulf between the
academic research world and its perspectives and the experiences of the
participants was great. Participatory research traditionally has employed
interviewing techniques to break down the power inequalities between
interviewer and interviewee. Most often researchers are advised to develop
trust and rapport by building on shared experiences and revealing personal
details (Lyons & Chipperfield, 2000). Participants seemed reluctant to
pick up on the interviewer's attempts to find some shared experiences (such as
parenting) as a starting point for dialogue or conversation. Reflecting on the
complex network of social relations in which both researcher and researched
were positioned, this reluctance seemed to be related to a lack of confidence.
Many of the participants worried that they were simply not up with the play,
that they would not be able to keep up with the pace of learning in the
training sessions and would not be able to use the computer on their own at
home. In the early encounters between researcher and the researched,
participants were more intent on getting assistance with basics such as housing
and overdue bills than engaging in reflective interviews. It was clear that
participants saw the researchers as professional and from mainstream culture,
as having social capital connections (Pigg & Crank, 2004) and useful
contacts in the world outside, and the interview an opportunity for the
participant to pick up advice or information or get help with some technical
issue with the computer or internet connection. </p>
<p>The participatory
research model is, at its core, concerned with equipping marginalised or
'excluded' groups in our communities with research capabilities and
understandings that they can use to transform their own lives (Hurtig, 2008).
Its philosophical stand is that social transformation at the community level
comes about as local people get involved in participatory education and thereby
learn new critical practices that help them organise for change and achieve the
power to take control of their everyday situations, a mobilisation capacity
that was found among a group of CIH parents in 2003 – 2005 longitudinal case
study research (Williams, 2009). CIH as a non-traditional or informal
education scheme has been developed within such a transformative framework.
The researchers have drawn on the Paolo Freire pedagogical model for cultural
transformation (1970), in particular his concept of participatory education as
'dialogue' or a conversation with learners and the premise that learning starts
with the 'lived experience' of participants. The project is also founded on
Freire's concept of 'praxis', dialogue between the researcher and practitioner
that leads to action or change. Praxis is a way of building community and
social capital and acting in ways that promote social justice.</p>
<p>It took time for the
researchers to 'connect' with the community, and consequently for the
participants to see that taking part in research could be a reflective learning
experience for them. The researchers learned that the adoption of this project
by individual participants was not something that they could take for granted.
People are not passive recipients of new innovations (Greenhalgh, Robert,
McFarlane, Bate, & Kyriakidou, 2004, p. 598). They either find, or fail
to find, meaning in them, and develop positive or negative feelings about
them. The sharing of stories at CIH family meetings was the most powerful
means of convincing participants that they could benefit from the project, that
they could use internet banking, that they could support each other through
chat or e-mail and other such discoveries. </p>
<p>Narratives have been
very powerful persuasive tools to communicate the project to the wider NZ
audience. Providing a means for participants to share experiences is still,
ten years on, key to any successful CIH project and hence our interest in
exploring the potential of social media such as blogs or social networking to
engage families in making sense of their experience. </p>
<p><strong>Collaborative participatory research: 'The Tuhoe CIH'</strong></p>
<p>Given the history of
exploitation of indigenous peoples across the Pacific through past colonising
research practices, partnering with an indigenous Maori community put the issue
of power imbalances between the researcher and the researched to the fore in establishing
CIH in this community. 'The Tuhoe CIH' was the first community-initiated
project led by a tribal entity, the Tuhoe Education Authority (TEA). In order
to work effectively with the TEA it was important that the 2020 Communications
Trust understood the nature of the partnership between the TEA and the national
Ministry of Education. This partnership gave the TEA authority to govern all
Tuhoe schools as a cluster, finding solutions to issues with Tuhoe learners
that the Ministry on its own could not. The TEA sought a similar relationship
with the 2020 Communications Trust, whereby it would take on both ownership of
the project and the responsibility to put research findings into practice. </p>
<p>Building on the
research that revealed not only improved <i>whanau </i>(family) engagement with
the schools, but economic and educational benefits for the adults in these
communities (Craig, 2004), the TEA incorporated CIH as a scheme into a broader
strategy where the entire Tuhoe region (including schools, homes and businesses)
connected through a broadband and videoconferencing infrastructure. Today the
2020 Communications Trust is recognised for sowing the seeds of this
transformation, but ownership lies firmly with the local <i>iwi</i>. The
resulting secure <a href="http://www.ngaituhoe.com/">Tuhoe Digital Gateway</a>
connects tribal members so that all Tuhoe can be engaged in local
decision-making and that knowledge can be better shared. A key underlying
principle is <i>kaitiakitanga</i>, in which there is 'guardianship, protection,
care and vigilance of data about Maori that is collected, stored and accessed'
(Kamira, 2007). In response to loss caused by European domination of their
culture and history in the past, Tuhoe appropriate digital technologies now for
cultural protection and production, such as in a site for <a
href="http://www.ngaituhoe.com/Folders/KiwiGangs.html">Tuhoe Stories and
Interviews</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Measuring social cohesion: Urban mixed method case studies</strong></p>
<p>At
some distance to the north of the Children of the Mist, 'the Tuhoe CIH',
research was being conducted in two CIH communities in the suburbs of New
Zealand's largest city, Auckland, from 2003 - 2005. The study looked to assess
the role played by social cohesion in two communities and how this might relate
to the sustainability of internet use among new users. While the overall
approach was qualitative in these case studies (Williams, 2009), the research
goal - to assess how internet access and social cohesion are related in a free
home internet scheme - required a combination of methods. Internet use by CIH
participants over time, assessed using a survey, would be analysed together
with various manifestations of social cohesion such as community involvement,
volunteerism, evidence of solidarity, and others. This methodology was planned
to generate a range of types of data, and to permit dialogue between them so
that conclusions could be drawn about social conditions that appear to be
conducive to successful community internet.</p>
<p>In-depth
interviews between the researcher and adult CIH participants thus also included
survey questions relating to a quantitative Internet Connectedness Index
(ICI). The ICI is a multi-dimensional snapshot of people's relationship with
the internet<a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span
class=MsoFootnoteReference><span class=MsoFootnoteReference>[4]</a>,
modelled on an index created for the Metamorphosis project in Los Angeles
(Ball-Rokeach et al., n.d.). Described as a "...qualitative conceptualization ...
taking into consideration the breadth, depth, and the importance of
individuals' internet experience" (Jung, Kim, Lin, & Cheong, 2005, p. 64),
the ICI provides a numerical measure of an individual's relationship with the
internet over time.</p>
<p>The
other key dimension, social cohesion, was assessed in these two cases at both
individual participant level and at group level, from a variety of data using a
detailed framework of eight characteristics that the literature agrees are
features of a cohesive group (Williams, 2010a). These include whether or not
people worked outside the home or did voluntary work, their intention to stay
in the neighbourhood, the number of neighbours people knew by name, local
social networks they felt they could rely on, and many more drawn from an
extensive review of the literature. Results showed social cohesion was evidently
stronger in one community (Case A) at the beginning of the research than in the
other (Case B), and that this difference was sustained over time; and
importantly, internet use was sustained by more participants in Case A than in
Case B over the 2 year period of the research. It is possible to infer here
that a more cohesive community setting is related to more successful internet
uptake, conclusions linked to specific features found in Case A (Williams,
2009) such as the participants there being more
networked in their real-world neighbourhood, and a group among them mobilising
to ensure the free internet scheme continued. Other features of social
cohesion at Case A included peer mentoring support, leadership by more
confident users and knowledge sharing among the group (ibid., p. 233-234).</p>
<p>This
is potentially a most useful series of findings relating to the social
networking dimension of CIH as a community informatics model. For example they
imply that facilitation of social media use by regional CIH coordinators (who
have regular contact with all the communities of users) to take the social
relationships dimension to another level, is on the right track. What
becomes a refrain in CIH research and practice is the role played by social
support in the new internet user context, support that helps ensure "the
diffusion of innovations is essentially a social process consisting of people
talking to others" (Backer & Rogers, 1998, p. 17). CIH provides many
opportunities for talking, especially in real world face to face settings such
as at training sessions, parent meetings and in peer mentoring relationships.
The case study findings above underscore the potential for social cohesion,
generated by dialogue among a group of CIH participants, to support their
ongoing internet use. The findings thus also point toward consideration of Web
2.0 tools - social networking sites and blogs - as additional means of building
and maintaining group cohesion.</p>
<p><strong>Research tensions: Informing practice and policy</strong></p>
<p>CIH research has a
three-pronged mandate: informing practice and being responsive to each local
community; directing the ongoing development of the project nationally by
informing the 2020 Communications Trust; and reporting to funders and
policymakers on key pre-determined outcomes. The researchers have sought in the
research design to provide the most meaningful data to those engaged in the
day-to-day project activities at the community level as well as to satisfy the
funders and policy officials with an investment in the economic and social
benefits of the scheme. There have been tensions between community
storytelling or qualitative reporting and the collection of quantitative
'brute' data such as statistical measures of change in employment or education
status of participants over time. These tensions manifest themselves most
openly at the community level in the process of data collection. Participants
willingly share stories of their personal experiences of the project, at
celebrations or meetings, or more formally recorded research narratives.
However participants do struggle to complete survey questionnaires, hampered
perhaps by literacy or language barriers, but more often querying the relevance
of some of the questions posed by funders trying to tease out core economic
benefits of engagement in the project. These tensions have been a valuable
source of information to the researchers, accentuating the differences between
what the participants value in the project and what their priorities are for
their families and the community and the objectives set out by government (the
core funder) for such social interventions. This reinforces our argument that we
consider it likely that if ownership of community storytelling can be truly in
the hands of CIH participants themselves through creating and publishing their
own stories digitally, then sustainability of outcomes will be even more
enduring. The use of social media in this way may challenge more traditional
ideas about community ICT research.</p>
<p>The researchers (and
authors of this paper) approach these communities with differing theoretical
and methodological perspectives, those of communication studies and education.
While each author has built theoretical models originating in different
disciplines and published to a variety of audiences, they share an overall goal
of contributing to community informatics research and practice to promote
social justice. While the research instruments and datasets may differ, the
questions guiding analysis and interpretation are in essence the same. </p>
<p>Both researchers
combine qualitative and quantitative research strategies in their research
designs. The in depth case studies in two Auckland communities discussed in the
preceding section illustrate a mixed methods approach blending quantitative and
qualitative material that generated complex data tracing both internet
connectedness and social cohesion in the researched communities (Williams,
2009). These rich studies approached from a communication studies framework
also informed aspects of CIH project implementation such as clarifying
responsibility for project management so that external agendas would not stifle
local ownership, and affirming the importance of existing social networks in
enhancing sustainability of internet use and potentially driving further social
cohesion. </p>
<p>The early CIH pilot
projects (Cannons Creek and Panmure Bridge) were concerned with education
outcomes. The mixed methods approach in these case studies documented pre-
and post-educational statistical outcomes (literacy and numeracy scores) for
the children of families participating in the project and other quantitative
measures such as changes in absenteeism, truancy and patterns of parent contact
with the school alongside rich, intensive, multiple interviews over several
months with the children's caregivers about their experiences of living with an
internet-enabled computer in their home recording the adult learning
experiences. The CIH model of building community around the school is grounded
in this very early research, as it indicated how such a scheme can help
children's learning by giving parents the skills and digital means to support
their children and also that many parents make use of that home internet
connection to go further with their own learning and seek new employment
opportunities.</p>
<p>This interdisciplinary
research over the years has therefore informed the implementation of the CIH
model at the national level driven by the 2020 Communications Trust. Funding
for the scheme has also been tied to research evidence. The small-scale early
pilots were heavily reliant on community contributions and volunteers with
minimal short-term funding from a number of interested government agencies such
as education and economic development. Instruments developed over these ten
years to measure economic and social benefits at the community level have in
the last year (2010) produced sufficient evidence to guarantee ongoing annual
funding for CIH at the Cabinet level involving multiple government agencies.
Additionally the Ministry of Education funds a separate CIH programme for
refugee families as they settle into New Zealand communities. The 2020 Trust
may be able to achieve its goal of connecting the homes of every New Zealand
family with school-aged children but the funding demands a more sophisticated
research design to better capture longitudinal data.</p>
<p><strong>CIH research today: Community ownership and social media</strong></p>
<p>With more than 6,000
families participating today it is no longer feasible in terms of time and
travel for researchers to spend time in every community of every region
conducting intensive one-on-one interviews. CIH now today operates out of a
national 2020 Trust office located in the capital city of Wellington, adjacent
to central government, business and education. This office is staffed with a
part-time administrative assistant and a full-time CIH National Coordinator who
supports the regions and their projects as well as the Refugee CIH. A team of
18 part-time regional coordinators and technicians are backed by local steering
committees which manage the local projects. Regional coordinators come
together four times a year with the national office staff and researchers to
coordinate and plan.</p>
<p>Toward the end of the
last decade, the CIH coordinating group made the pragmatic decision that the
national office would restrict its research responsibility to the collection of
quantitative survey data (online pre- and post- measures of social and economic
benefits) for government, policy reporting and lobbying purposes, while
requesting that regional coordinators capture those rich research narratives at
the community level. A challenge for the researchers at the national level is
getting accurate and complete responses from community participants to online
forms. Regional coordinators and local trainers assist with the administration
of the online surveys as part of training in the Community Technology Centre (CTC)
facility at the school or when participants come together for a project
meeting.</p>
<p>In order to collect
these narratives, the CIH team began to employ social media, specifically
blogs, which not only permit communities to tell their own stories rather than
a researcher doing so, but also invite the expression of identity and culture.
It is at the community level that the project is exploring the use of blogs as
a research tool. Regional coordinators have attended workshops on
community-based research (Stoecker, 2005), specifically learning narrative
interview techniques and exploring how, as researchers, they might use these
local stories in community-based project development. Each coordinator is
responsible for their <a
href="http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz/the-programme/the-projects">regional
blog</a> and its content. The layout and visual design varies, but each of the
twenty-one sites document progress in the project with visual images, videos
and stories that may be authored or produced by any of the community
participants. These <a
href="http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz/the-programme/the-projects">regional
blogs</a> may be accessed through the CIH website. Community development is
now the responsibility of those in the local community. The Tuhoe CIH sits as a
model of how the community can take ownership of this scheme.</p>
<p>A next-stage study is
also in progress aiming to build on the 2003 – 2005 social cohesion studies
(Williams, 2009) through research that evolves in partnership with the school
to foster social media use. Thirty-one families from an urban primary school
in Avondale, Auckland, completed their CIH training and started their home
internet use in July 2011. The researcher is liaising with the "IT Lead
Teacher" (chiefly responsible for the CIH group), the school Principal, and the
group of 31 families, to develop ways of documenting their experiences that
suit the parents and the school. Collaborative research may assist in guiding
progress toward the Principal's key objective of fostering family connectedness
with the school through CIH which she sees as an opportunity for home-school
partnership. The community itself provides the impetus, with the "research"
comprising the sharing of knowledge (such as different ways to use an online
community) among the teacher, parents, mentors, helpers and "the researcher",
and ultimately shared experiences such as interviews or journals or other
outcomes are being created together. Positive signs of a sound basis for
further home-school connectedness, as desired by the Principal, are present:
high attendance at the training sessions, close supervision and mentoring both
by volunteers and the parents amongst themselves, as well as relaxed
socialising in the school staffroom have all laid the groundwork for a feeling
of belonging to the group and "the school family", a metaphor used by the
Principal in talking with parents. Social media may now provide further ties
that bind in this learning community. </p>
<p><strong>Conclusions and future directions</strong></p>
<p>We have shown in this
paper that community informatics research tracing the outcomes of CIH in New
Zealand has been intrinsic to its evolution. In the early years of
implementation, participatory research by one of the authors (Craig, 2001)
yielded focus group notes and stories from interviews that were transcribed and
analysed. These forms of data were instrumental to the conduct and overall
success of the scheme in the early years (Craig, 2004), being tailored to the
requirements of the 2020 Communications Trust and its goal of being responsive
to the needs of local community groups, as well as informing improvements to
CIH implementation. The two urban mixed method case studies in the mid-2000s
combined qualitative interviews with a quantitative measure of social cohesion
and internet connectedness in order to understand the relationship between
community support and the uptake of the internet (Williams, 2009). These
indepth studies have informed other facets of CIH project implementation, in
particular the critical role of real world connections and mentoring
relationships in successful projects.</p>
<p>These are important
lessons for future implementation; we maintain that now is the time to make
real grassroots ownership of the research through putting the community
storytelling into the hands of CIH participants themselves. These regional
stories can apprise those project personnel on the ground how to act on local
values, needs and issues. Thus research and practice have intersected for some
years in Computers in Homes in order to enhance its effectiveness, and will
continue to do so as both academic researchers and community practitioners work
to harness new media to further inquire into socially just outcomes in our
communities.</p>
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<hr />
<div id=ftn1>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span
class=FootnoteCharacters><span class=FootnoteCharacters>[1]</a> Computers in Homes
operates in low-income communities and in refugee communities. Specific
details of the regions where there are active projects as well as information
about early community sites can be found at <a
href="http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz/the-programme/">http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz/the-programme/</a></p>
</div>
<div id=ftn2>
<p><a href="#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span
class=FootnoteCharacters><span class=FootnoteCharacters>[2]</a> New Zealand schools are assigned a
Decile ranking from 1 to 10, calculated from census statistics on income,
occupation, household crowding, education and on income support (Ministry of
Education, 2008, 'Deciles information' section). CIH works predominantly with
the most economically disadvantaged 10% of communities ranked Decile 1.</p>
</div>
<div id=ftn3>
<p><a href="#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span
class=FootnoteCharacters><span class=FootnoteCharacters>[3]</a> A significant new finding
is that computer use is strongly associated with higher literacy and numeracy,
especially the combination of work and home computer use (Lane, 2010).
Computer use is particularly prevalent in managerial, professional, technical
and clerical occupations, is associated with intensive and extensive literacy
and numeracy practices, and is associated with involvement in ongoing education
and/or training. Work computer use or non-use divides jobs broadly into those
that require higher literacy and numeracy and those that don't. Home computer
use is associated with greater involvement in personal literacy activities
(ibid.). Thus a large overlap exists between the groups of people with low
literacy and low numeracy, and the group of people who do not use a computer at
work.</p>
</div>
<div id=ftn4>
<p><a href="#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span
class=FootnoteCharacters><span class=FootnoteCharacters>[4]</a> The Metamorphosis ICI,
ranging from 1 (the lowest internet connectedness) to 12 (the highest internet
connectedness), is made up of eleven items. These are: evaluation of the
internet; how much would one miss the <i>computer</i> when absent; how much
would one miss the <i>internet</i> when absent; time spent online; history of
home computer use; time spent on online activities; scope of goals in internet
use; scope of online activities; scope of places of internet use; scope of
computer use; scope of email use. The version of the Metamorphosis ICI used
for the CIH case studies was made up of eight items, omitting the items 'scope
of email use' and 'scope of PC use', and combining the two separate technology
dependency questions into one.</p>
</div>