User:Solstag/OCSDNet Proposal

Study title:

Understanding and strengthening the development impact of community based knowledge production spaces by combining ethnographic and data analysis of their evolution as a collaboration network

Research team:

Alexandre H. Abdo (principal researcher), Carmen P. C. Prado (research collaborator), Sarita Albagli (external collaborator)

Proponent organization:

Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT)

Total budget cost (CAD):

79,331.45 CAD, to be supplemented by local grants

Abstract
Through the last decade, in parallel with the introduction of digital technologies, community based knowledge production spaces sprung in different parts of Brazil, some supported by government programs - telecenters, culture spots - while others self-financed by its members - hackerspaces, culture houses. It is generally accepted, based on previous literature, reports and testmonials, that these prototipical citizen science environments play an important role in the improvement of life in connected communities, as a venue for knowledge intensive emancipatory practices both economical and political. Furthermore, some of these spaces share characteristics which make them a rich target for research: a strong digital record on mailing lists, wikis and blogs; participants with diverse backgrounds, from professionals to students to career academics; known impact stories involving knowledge transfer, innovation and development by and of communities. We propose to collect and structure the digital tracks of these initiatives, while performing ethnographical research to connect that information to broader individual and social contexts. The outputs of this stage would then be fed to statistical analysis which will inform critical discourse on the construction of these spaces, on their role in development of connected communities, and on their ambiguous relationships with academic institutions and governments. In addition, throughout the research cycle and together with these communities, we'll formulate proposals to improve their impact on and relationships with these communities and institutions, based on our assessment and their own engagement to this research project.

Case selection (everyone)
Search for candidate spaces and select 4 that fit the following criteria:

a. is active

b. has an online digital record of discussions and activities longer than 2 years

c. has known cases of contributions to better perspectives and opportunities for participants and connected communities

d. geographical diversity

e. is open to collaborate with our research

The most significant part of this step will be the interaction with these communities in order to establish tacit agreements to collaborate in the development of this research, including procedures to open the data and how to store it privately in case of objections to opening up sensitive parts of interviews and private communications.

Data collection (Alexandre, Carmen)
This involves identifying the communication protocols used by each community, setting up databases and developing data scraping tools, cleaning up the data from spam and other unrelated content, structuring it properly for research. We'll likely have to negotiate access to some content, and recruit the assistance of participants to complement the data available. In particular we'll have to make sure data is properly timestamped so we can analyze the evolution of relationships which constitute these spaces.

Ethnography and surveying (an ethnographer, Alexandre)
In this step we'll try to answer questions like the following ones, through the usual methods of observation, participation, interviews and questionnaires:


 * What is the income distribution and education background of participants?


 * How did they learn about these spaces and why do they go there?


 * What opportunities do they understand they've achieved from participating?


 * How do they feel about the role of these spaces in motivating them to pursue knowledge and improve their living conditions?


 * How have they applied the knowledges and practices they learned in these spaces towards improving their livelihood?


 * How has their participation affected their learning and research? Did participation drive them to pursue a more knowledge intensive career?


 * What do participants see as important differences between these spaces and more formal knowledge environments?

The ethnographer, to be recruited once the project moves past a conceptual note, will follow the chosen communities virtually and, taking turns, visiting and participating in their daily affairs. If possible, in two cycles, enriching the picture by looking between them and across different moments.

Statistical analysis and modeling (Alexandre, Carmen)
We will adopt a network analysis perspective, and characterize the topological properties of the evolving relationship networks formed by the participants of these spaces and their surroundings, including institutions and other communities, and interactions between these spaces themselves.

We intend to:


 * provide visual representations which highlight topological similarities and disparities


 * calculate the usual indexes of degree distribution and correlations, diameters and distances, clustering coefficients, among others that will let us identify properties such as 'small worldliness' and freedom of scale.


 * identify patterns and mechanisms for their growth and evolution, comparing our data to models from the literature, like random and preferential attachment networks, and designing more appropriate specialized models, accounting for features informed by ethnography.


 * with additional input from the communities, develop metrics for the health and maturity of their relationship networks.

Computational resources for data mining and processing will be provided by USP. We'll employ Free Software only, most likely Gephi for network visualization and Graph-tool for analysis.

Critical analysis (Alexandre, Sarita)
We shall compare our results to both the intuitive self-evaluation these communities make of themselves, and to current science and development policy, inquiring issues relevant to their growth and impact, as:


 * Do their development outcomes justify public investment in these kind of activities, and how?


 * What kinds and patterns of relationships emerge there, how does that support the diffusion and creation of knowledge? *If these patterns play a role in promoting development, how can our understanding of them inform current practices in academia?


 * What needs do these communities have that hurt their scalability and ability to improve lives?


 * How can academia contribute by supplying resources, developing tools, or otherwise responding to these needs?


 * Which aspects of motivations are homogeneous across participants, which are not, and how is that diversity important?


 * How can citizens, governments and organizations, through action and policy, leverage the development potential of these spaces without clashing with these motivations?

Outcomes and relevance
We expect to characterize the growth of community based knowledge production spaces and how they impact local development. This would be useful as a source of self-awareness and introspection for the improvement of existing initiatives and the establishment of future ones.

In particular, by expliciting and structuring the issue of development impact in their reflexive dialogue, we will assist in developing and provide simple creteria to be adopted that account for development issues in the planning and documentation of projects within these spaces, so the cummulative knowledge they already build extends to these aspects as well.

We hope this way knowledge about the social development potential of these spaces may be shared accross them and provide fertile ground for collaboration and adaptation of impactful approaches among participants inclined to give development a more relevant role in guiding their activities.

Our research will also be useful to inform traditional academic institutions about the mutual influence between them and these spaces, which could lead them to recognize and account for contributions and identify contradictions in their individual and institutional evaluations, driving incentives towards greater synnergy and reforming habits and rules that cause conflict.

The same can be said of governments, who sometimes provide support for these spaces but have struggled in understanding their investment in order to improve or justify its continuity.

Monitoring and evaluation
We will conduct this research as far as possible under the guidelines of Open Notebook Science. Anyone will be able to follow our work in real time, contribute code, data and even interviews, or discuss our methodology, partial results and suggest new approaches. All information will be accessible through a page on the Portuguese Language Wikiversity, and published under an Open License.

We will incentivize participation and monitoring from the research subjects, who have a vested interest in the outputs of our research, and colleagues from the accademic community, amongh which we have already identified, through the Brazilian Open Science Working Group, a good number whose academic interests overlap with this project.

Furthermore, as all the tools and methods will be open from the start, we may even hope some of our colleagues might engage beyond monitoring, or members of the communities under study might engage the project as citizen scientists. If that happens, they could not only help validate our results, but even scale the project into more ambitious depths or to other spaces that our research team will not be able to reach.

Finally, in addition to the ongoing possibility for criticism and participation, we will evaluate the impact of our research in terms of its repercussion among these groups, gathering feedback about the adequacy of our methods and usefullness of our outputs through surveys directed at both the citizen and academic communities.