The Power of Community Events for Designing Participatory Community ICTs

Abstract

This research describes the development of a method for analyzing communities by focusing on community events. The theoretical framework that informs the community event research method, as it is called here, comes from the theory of social capital and from an argument based on the work of Clifford Geertz and Barry Toelken that community events are symbolic systems that capture local knowledge. By focusing on community events it is possible to know the ethos of a community and build socially inclusive community information and communication technologies (lCTs) based on an understanding of this ethos and not focus on the problems (pathos).