See the link below. Interesting paper
Impact of local ICT Iniatives on Social Capital and quality of life. produced by Chimera University of essex April 2006
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/content/pubs/wps/CWP-2006-06-Local-ICT-Social-Capital.pdf
We are working with lots of local people to develop web based content. The problem is how you develop a sustainable model. Could content that is produced be sold? If so how and what is the market. Any ideas?
MCIN is currently developing community reporters. These are local people who can talk about there experiences , or tell people things such as how to cook a particular dish or produce a match report for the local school football team or write an article about a local event. We are having a debate about weather to call the community reporters or community journalists. I think the difference is that community reporters could be opinions or more magazine type content rather than community journalists which is story based and more balanced. I am interested if other people see a difference?
There does not appear to be any research on the use of ICT to support bridging social capital. I Know from informal disucssions with web connect users that this takes place but how can you measure it. Also there is massive discussion about social cohesion. Anyone know any research that exists uses ICT in order to improve social cohesion. Some of the wok that MCIN does around developing web based content is promoting social cohesion look at our community media stuff. How can we measure this?
With an increasing lack of resources being given to work in communites to reduce the digitial divide. Does this mean the digital divide has now been bridged.
The move by government to work based learning means that the old style community education is no longer an option.How does the government expect people who have been excluded from education and training in the past to improve there skills if community based education is no longer available
Defining Community Information
A broad working definition of public/community information has been adopted to include information on services provided by local authorities, voluntary and community organisations, health trusts, benefits agencies, GPs, information on employment, training, educational opportunities, leisure, cultural activities and resources for local groups and businesses.
MCIN has written the following article on defining community information which can be downloaded
Community Information Definition (pdf download)
Exploring the MCIN model
More informaition on our approach can be found in the following article Electronic Content Development (pdf download)
Research paper on MCIN undertaken in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University (March 2005)
MCIN Paper
