Visions of Community: Community Informatics and the Contested Nature of a Polysemic Term for a Progressive Discipline

Community Informatics (CI) is an academic field of study that seeks to examine
how information and communication technologies (ICT) such as Web 2.0 social media and mobile technologies can be deployed for the benefit of communities. Community is, however, a problematic and polysemic term, meaning different things to different people, and it has inherently political overtones.
This article aims to bring to the attention of practitioners in the field of CI the
contested nature of the term community, and to examine the historical origin
of the term and the multiple ways in which it has been and can be used. In
exploring this term, we make use of more literary, historical, and sociological
approaches. Such approaches can offer new insights on the topic for audiences from more technical academic disciplines. With such discussion to assist
practitioners of CI of the problematic ways in which community has been and
can be used, we offer the following recommendations: (1) Use of the term
community remains largely unproblematized, and we ought to be more mindful of its history; (2) community should be recognized as a locally contingent
position; (3) as a term of reference, its use should be carefully considered
within speciªc contexts; (4) a fuller exploration of the term in the CI discipline
is needed; and (5) practitioners in the ªeld of CI will require greater reaction
on the term community when addressing ICT practice issues. We hope that
these recommendations may lead to more reflexive practice in the progressive
discipline of CI.