Processes of Proliferation

Airi Lampinen, Ann Light, Chiara Rossitto, Anton Fedosov, Chiara Bassetti, Aniko Bernat, Penny Travlou, Gabriela Avram

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

While scalability and growth are key concerns for mainstream, venture-backed digital platforms, local and location-oriented collaborative economies are diverse in their approaches to evolving and achieving social change. Their aims and tactics differ when it comes to broadening their activities across contexts, spreading their concept, or seeking to make a bigger impact by promoting co-operation. This paper draws on three pairs of European, community-centred initiatives which reveal alternative views on scale, growth, and impact. We argue thatproliferation - a concept that emphasises how something gets started and then travels in perhaps unexpected ways - offers an alternative toscaling, which we understand as the use of digital networks in a monocultural way to capture an ever-growing number of participants. Considering proliferation is, thus, a way to reorient and enrich discussions on impact, ambitions, modes of organising, and the use of collaborative technologies. In illustrating how these aspects relate inprocesses of proliferation, we offer CSCW an alternative vision of technology use and development that can help us make sense of the impact of sharing and collaborative economies, and design socio-technical infrastructures to support their flourishing.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3492860
JournalProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Volume6
Issue numberGROUP
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Jan 2022
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • collaborative economy
  • impact
  • local initiative
  • proliferation
  • scaling
  • sharing economy

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