“There is no such thing as a poor community. Even neighborhoods without much money have substantial human resources. Often, however, the human resources are not appreciated or utilized, partly because people do not have information about each other and about what their neighborhood has to offer. For example, a family whose heater is broken may go cold for lack of knowledge that someone just down the block knows how to fix it. [Technologies] of all kinds have great potential for building and maintaining communities.” (Resnick & King, 1997, pp. 229-230)
MIT Media Lab student Randal Pinkett used this quote in his dissertation on a community network site he built in Boston for the Camfield Estates, a public housing community in Boston. This quote is central to emphasizing the importance of what role community network sites can play in helping its members turn to each other in times of need rather than appealing to service institutions. In a time when many are struggling to make ends meet, the need for establishing micro bartering economies has become more pressing, and the ability for a social networking site to make community resource more visible is an important step in this direction.
In this travelogue I began by both reading Pinkett’s dissertation while exploring the social networking site neighbors for neighbors. NfN started two years ago serving primarily the town of Jamaica Plain in the City of Boston. Since then it has expanded to include sections for all the other towns in Boston. I decided to begin my investigation by looking at the sites mission statement. This gave me an idea of how to determine how well the site was meeting its goals.
(see below image for the site goals)
Joseph Porcelli, the networks founder and lead editor posted a statement that seems to capture the mission of the site.
In this post he emphasizes the power of the community to cast their gaze around them rather than above when in search of support. The idea behind such a statement is to set a tone for the culture he is trying to create for this network. His goal is to connect those who have something to offer with those who have a particular need. By doing this, the network NfN is promoting a self sufficient community.
All of this sounds fantastic, but what are the realities of NfN? How well does it meet its mission? With both the networks mission statement and the post by the founder in mind, I set out by exploring two communities that I was most familiar with, the towns of Roxbury and Dorchester. Each towns page has the following categories: Invite, My Page, Members, Photos, Videos, Forum, Events, Groups, and Blogs. Below the categories one finds a “start here” section that provides some context to the categories. This is helpful if someone is new to the site and unsure as to what the function of a section might be.
In order to get an idea of the activity within these networks, I decided to focus on the following sections: Forums, Groups, and Blogs. When I began my search however, I found that the two towns that I picked were relatively new to the network and thus had a low number of members. Roxbury had 17 while Dorchester had 98. I explored my designated sections in the respective networks but saw minimal participation. Given that NfN had only recently launched these sites, I decided to move my focus onto Jamaica Plain, the town that was the original network for NfN and boasts close to 1500 members. Despite the need to shift focus, I did not ignore the fact that my original target sites had a low number of members. While I do not have extensive research and data to answer the question of why this was the case, I was able to obtain some demographic data on NfN users in JP, Boston census information, as well as cull some information out of Pinkett’s dissertation that I think may lead to some answers that fall in line with the digital divide argument.
In his dissertation, Pinkett cites data on the technology consumption habits between caucasian’s and minorities.
“Whites outspend minorities in the product categories of personal computers, laptop computers, Internet access, cable modems, and ISDN telephone lines (Strategy Research Corporation, 2001).”
Combine this point with the 2000 census data from the City of Boston website that shows Roxbury as having 5% Non-Hispanic White and 63% Black or African-American while Jamaica Plain is 50% Non-Hispanic White, 17% Black or African-American, and it seems like we might have our answer, especially when user data from the Jamaica Plain network shows that over 90% of its users are listed as caucasian.
To this point of consumption habits, Pinkett says,
“when searching for effective strategies to foster engagement with information and communications technology, it is incumbent upon designers and planners to ensure that the infrastructure is well suited to the interests of end-users.” p.60
Pinkett not only encourages designers to be aware of this fact, he also says that users should be involved with the design process itself. While this is a worthwhile area to explore, I will hold off on this for now and stick to my focus on examining the current use of NfN. What I will say is that as a former teacher in the Boston Public Schools, I know that almost all of my students had cell phones and a good number of them had internet access, so perhaps creating the site in such a way where it is easily navigable on a cell phone browser might be a good start.
Coming back to the examination of the network layout, I began by looking at the Groups. With so many members, the JP network was able to create groups that focus on particular neighborhoods. This is especially helpful for organizing around issues that may affect a small area. An example of this hyper-local organizing through the network is seen in the following example: Since the beginning of the summer, JP has experienced a a rash of burglaries. In response to this, the JP network has become a hub for organizing to contend with this. In the Central Jamaica Plain group, Joseph Porcelli, the sites founder, posts information about a break in and sets up a meeting time for members of the particular neighborhood at 1pm the next day to discuss how to deal with the crimes. In my communication with Joseph, 14 people showed up the next day and the outcome of the meeting produced the following action items.
Here we have what I find to be a solid example of effective organizing between citizens to take community matters into their own hands as opposed to only relying on the police.
The forums feature 6 categories, one of which is classified as community resources and another classified as skill share/tool share. In the skill share/tool-share category I found an example that related to the quote that kicked off the post. Here we have an individual who is looking for help with small jobs around the house. Another example worth noting is when a user posted a request for help with their vegetable garden in exchange for providing the person who helps with some of the vegetables that come out of the garden. In my opinion this is a decent example of supporting a bartering economy that is especially helpful in these challenging economic times.
Finally, looking at Blogs, my attention was caught by one post that included a video that teaches people how to use the new recycling bins provided by the city.
While I found some decent examples of organizing and resource sharing taking place on the network, I did find that many requests for information or blog posts in general had no responses . I asked Joseph Porcelli whether or not he has information about communications generated from these posts taking place off site, as in users emailing each other directly. I am waiting on his reply.
Another point worth noting is that the three sections I focused on, forums, blogs, and groups, all seemed to have content that seemed to be placed in the wrong section (e.g. what should be a blog post found itself in the forums). This can be a problem for both the user who is posting information or looking for information. My feeling is that this is a cultural issue on the network that will be worked out in time as more users take ownership and start to establish stricter guidelines that will help with the networks efficiency of information organization.
In my next post I hope to feature interviews with some of the sites users as well as explore the issue of how to build up site use in forums, blogs, groups and network membership for those towns with a low number of members.
Special Thanks to Joseph Porcelli for taking time to answer my questions!!
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Party Starter (4) | Gabriel Mugar
- Refining the Social and Techincal Design of NfN (3) | Gabriel Mugar
- Do community based social networks improve visibility of resources and civic engagement? (1) | Gabriel Mugar
7 Comments
Having lived in Jamaica Plain for 2 years, I’m not surprised at all about the high number of members here. JP had a very distinct communal feeling to it, and was very localized and progressive — I could definitely see how a site like this would work in a town like this, but don’t see it being so successful in all neighborhoods.
Also, as far as high/low numbers of members go, it’s more of an incentive to join a group when it’s active – if I was a citizen of Roxbury interested in joining the network, and saw that there were only 17 members, I’m not so sure I would make the effort, deeming it not worth the time – but with 1500 members, I would definitely join the JP group. I wonder what it takes to get the ball rolling, ie, when/how does a social networking begin to pickup speed in gaining members?
Thanks for the comment. The issue of getting the ball rolling is what I would like to explore in my next post. In my initial conversations with the founder of NfN, he talked about using the good old fashioned face to face conversation as a means of driving attention to the site. However I still think there are technical and cultural barriers to overcome. By technical I mean the element of access points and by cultural I mean that of NfN, where once you have people on the site (even if its just 17 members) how do you promote a culture of participation.
Gabe, you analysis is extremely helpful, and confirms what I’ve been thinking are issues we need address. In regards to blog post I’ve made requests for general support, it does seem that some go unanswered. I’m sure why, yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Were you able to look at the age demographics of the users? It could be that young people who have access to the internet, whether at home or by phone, are not interested in this kind of service, but their parents (who are probably less web-savvy) are.
If you want to engage them, it might be worth considering a word-of-mouth approach based on the opinion-leader research of Katz and Lazarsfeld… You’d have to talk to the people who are already on the network, find the influential ones, and find a way to get them to talk to their friends about it.
going through the site i saw many examples where users asked other users to get the word out about particular issues and encourage others to join the site. Also, as I mentioned in my reply to allison, NfN has engaged in door knocking, flyering, and other word of mouth campaigns. I do not, however, know if these campaigns have been city wide of specific to particular towns/neighborhoods. I will try and find out more details on their campaigns to generate awareness about NfN. I imagine that since the site is gaining more support in the community that it may do more of this in the coming months.
One of the issues you posted about – misplaced information [i.e. blog posts in member forums] – seems to be quite common among interactive networks. I came across this problem in my study of the Adbusters network as well. Do you think this problem is because of the interface or because of the contributing members? Is there even a difference – for instance, should the interface of the site be more simplistic in order to prevent this?
The local bartering economy is a concept that has always fascinated me. A few years back, I took a class on Welfare Reform in the United States. A book that I read for my research was about a group of families which the author followed over the course of 5-6 years. He found that in lower class neighborhoods and housing complexes, this idea of a bartering economy was a recurring theme. Services were exchanged for goods, etc. [babysitting in exchange for food or foodstamps, for example]. It seems to present itself in financially unstable situations. I think that this type of social networking site could lead to a more widespread establishment of these local economies that transcends class and social status. This could lead to communities consuming less and using resources more efficiently. Do you think this is a viable possibility? Is there any way that NfN could better promote this?
Jason- Thanks for the comment. I will try to address both of your points in my final travelogue as I think they are key aspects in the discussion of design and function.