The Community Informatics Orientation has much in common with  areas of activity such as Community Record-Keeping, Archiving and Memory work, as well as the Arts (media, dance, installations, object creation with technology ) oriented to the community.  And now we wish to look at Environmental Informatics

All fields  share a common goal of  empowering communities in support of such desirable objectives as democracy, community knowledge,  civil  and information rights, self-determination, sustainable development, and social inclusion. 

Key activities in the past  have included a listserv, the Journal of Community Informatics, and the Prato CIRN Conferences from which proceedings from 2004-2021 are available online.  A number of books associated with the network have also appeared over the years, including:

• What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter)? (2007) 

• Communities in Action: Papers in Community Informatics (2009)

• Constructing and Sharing Memory: Community Informatics, Identity and Empowerment (2007)

•  Theories Practices and Examples for Community Informatics (2014)

Over the decades, themes have ranged across issues such as privilege, gender & sexual identities, forms of knowledge, documentation, participation & community-based research, power, ideals & reality, measurement, and the applied arts. While we have a particular theme each year we also seek papers (that include referred, work-in-progress, and non-refereed), presentations, posters, and graduate student work related to any aspect of Community Informatics, Environmental Informatics, Community Archiving, Development Informatics , Art, Archives Memories, and community intersections with ICTs.

We are particularly interested in papers from researchers and practitioners that can address the challenges of locating community-focused research within wider theoretical and practice frameworks. We also have a research student (masters and doctorate) presence and encourage the submission of current or planned work in colloquium sessions. This is a great opportunity for interaction with other students in an international setting. More generally, CIRN conference is a highly social event in a small and culturally-rich part of Italy.

Our Interdisciplinary approach

Community Informatics is primarily concerned with improving the well-being of people and their communities through more effective use of ICTs. Community Informatics foregrounds social change and transformative action in emergent social-technical relationships rather than prediction and control and likewise, Development Informatics or ICT4D is concerned with ICTs in the international development context. This orientation also has much in common with Community Archiving.

Community-centric archival research, education and practice are concerned with empowering communities in support of such desirable objectives as democracy, human and civil rights, self-determination, sustainable development, and social inclusion. Recordkeeping and archiving are fundamental infrastructural components supporting community information, self-knowledge and memory needs, thus contributing to resilient communities and cultures and supporting reconciliation and recovery in the aftermath of conflict, oppression.

Development Informatics (also called ICT4D) is involved with the use of ICTs in international development settings. The purpose of International Development is heavily contested, and thus, the use and interpretations of ICTs in that space is also subject to a wide variety of interpretations. More recently, those in the Art, and Archives Memories and ICTs have been participating with us in an exploration of how the media, dance and other forms of arts interested in ICTs intersect with community development, community memory and archives.

Environmental Informatics  

Environmental informatics, defined by Kolehmainen (2004,) as application of “information technology to environmental issues using data-driven methods”, has gained popularity among different academic disciplines and professional groups across the world. With widespread use of ICT, representation of environmental data has been changing over the years. Such representation is mostly done through Geographic Information System (GIS) that enables environmental science and management researchers and professionals to capture and analyse spatial and geographic data. Satellite remote sensing, digitization of environmental and social data obtained from the ground and environmental modelling are some key tools in this regard. Since environmental informatics has become an integral part of different feasibility, baseline, monitoring and evaluation studies, important project design and policy decisions are often influenced by it.

However, with rapid environmental changes happening due to numerous socio-economic factors, it has been observed that environmental informatics is sometimes insufficiently dynamic to account for social change and social complexity around issues of hierarchy, gender, resource distribution, privacy and power, and the complexity of relationship between development projects, NGOs and communities.  This can affect both the quality and process of quality data collection on the ground, as well as how and with whom information is shared and in what form. And what is the place of indigenous knowledge and knowledge rights in all of this?

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