Social Movements; Information Systems; Participation;. Technology for Social Inclusion; .... a mix of social networking, content management system. (CMS) and ...
Guidelines for an information system aimed to increase participation in social movements and community movements Celso Alexandre Souza de Alvear ABSTRACT
Research are not direct related to IS, but they can be helpful thinking IS to Social an Community Movements. For this, it is necessary to establish some criteria that can be directed applied in concrete experiences. In this way, seven criteria are presented bellow.
This paper intends to reflect on important criteria in the development, deployment and management of information systems (IS) aimed at supporting social movements and community movements, especially regarding to make possible and to stimulate a more direct and extended participation of its members. For this, from theoretical references as Studies of Science, Technology and Society (STS), Participative Management, Cooperation, Consensus, Participatory Design and Action Research, seven criteria were defined to be considered in the development or analysis of IS. These criteria were created from these theoretical frameworks in dialogue with two case studies of IS. The first is Cirandas (www.cirandas.net), developed to support the social movement of Solidarity Economy. The second is the community web portal of Cidade de Deus (www.cidadededeus.org.br), aimed to increase the integration between different community-based organizations of Cidade de Deus (“City of God”). The analysis of these two systems shows how the incorporation of some properties of these categories allowed greater participation of members of these movements.
1. Guidance for users' objectives
The objectives of the system, its interfaces and its controls should be defined by its users. The system should reflect as closely as possible the actual users activities that are intended to support, as they are in practice. This issue is exhaustively treated by Participatory Design authors, like it is debated in various chapters of Schuler and Namioka (1993). However, it must be flexible, so that over time, suits the activities as the users would like it to be, and to help them in this way. It should be used participatory and iterative methods, and varied techniques for requirements elicitation, to understanding how the users work and their desires, as is the case of Ethnography (BLOMBERG et al, 1993) and Action Research (THIOLLENT, 1985). 2. Collective administration
The system must allow different forms of administration, mainly based on participatory management processes. Thus, administration should inspire from processes similar to plenary sessions, direct democracy processes, committees, working groups, representations with different weights in decisions and even pre-given hierarchies.
Author Keywords
Social Movements; Information Systems; Participation; Technology for Social Inclusion; ACM Classification Keywords
D.2.1 Software Engineering: Requirements/Specification; D.2.10 Software Engineering: Design.
These forms of administration and its instruments were thought through the various forms of participatory management presented by Faria (2009), in his book Participatory Management, which makes an analysis of several concrete cases. Among these cases are the cooperatives in the International Cooperative Alliance model, Solidarity Economy enterprises, the Factory Committees in Spain and in Brazil, the co-management in Germany, the Kibbutzim in Israel, the cooperative movement of Yugoslavia and the Paris Commune.
INTRODUCTION
Social Movements and Community Movements are often formed by people who have an counter-hegemonic struggle, and thus have powerful and organized opponents. Often these people and organizations are geographically dispersed, and the construction of proposals by these movements is complex and difficult, causing some leaders to take some decisions that do not necessarily reflect the will of the collective.
It is important that over time, the system stimulates and establish conditions for a more direct and expanded participation.
In this sense, the use of information systems can contribute to a broader participation in developing these proposals. In this article, from a perspective of nonneutrality of technology presented by the Science and Technology Studies, some criteria are presented for the development of information systems focused on Social and Community Movements. After that, two information systems developed in this direction are discussed.
3. Active moderation
The system should encourage the participation of users, identifying common goals, forming user groups around common interests and promoting continuity of discussion. In addition, must have an environment conducive to cooperation, consensus and the arrival of collective decision making.
CRITÉRIOS
Theoretical references as Participative Management, Cooperation, Consensus, Participatory Design and Action
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The theory of cooperation of Tuomela (2000), points out that an essential element for stronger cooperation is the
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7. Accounting participation
establishment of clear and explicit shared goals. The consensus theory of Moscovici and Doise (1991), brings the issue of warm environments that facilitate the arrival at consensus, as structures that allow a debate without constrictions and leave people free to put their opinions.
The IS shall account the participation and the investment of time of users in the IS. It may also consider the duties and responsibilities that users have outside the system. These accountings should be used as a way to assign weight to the decisions of users, and as a way of giving more administration rights to these users.
Finally, Wright and Street (2007) affirm the importance of an active moderator, who may be one person or the system itself, in order to encourage the continuation of discussions on the system, the constructive criticism and construction of syntheses and proposals from the several posts in forums.
To someone have rights, it should have duties. Participation can occur in many different ways, and one reason is the commitment that each person has with the group and the level of impact that this decision has on your life (BORDENAVE, 1994). So it is fare to give more rights to the users with a greater involvement.
4. Flexibility
The system in its development should be conceived to allow some level of readjustment of its goals through its administration or even of its use. Agile methods of software development can bring a great contribution by way of their rapid development cycles that create software easier to change, unlike the waterfall model (Martin 2002).
CIRANDAS.NET AND CIDADE DE DEUS COMMUNITY WEB PORTAL
To analyze the relevance of these criteria, they were applied in two information systems. The first, Cirandas.net, was developed to assist the social movement of Solidarity Economy, and actually has social networking features to expand communication between its members and a content management system for the enterprises create their sites (TYGEL and ALVEAR, 2011).
The SI should also allow that some actions can be undertaken in presential processes (outside the system) and that these processes can be incorporated later. It preferably be developed in a model of Free and Open Source Software, allowing the cost of improvements and bug fixes to be shared by different user groups (SILVEIRA, 2004).
The second, the Cidade de Deus Community Web Portal, was created to support the community movement in the Cidade de Deus neighborhood (internationally known as City of God slum by the movie), as an integration platform between various community-based social organizations and residents (ALVEAR and THIOLLENT, 2011).
5. Transparency
To take part in decision-making and participation, it is essential that people may have the necessary information (BORDENAVE, 1994). An information system in this sense, should facilitate access to all information aggregated and disaggregated in an easily and visually way.
Cirandas.net
The Cirandas.net was developed by a cooperative from a demand of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum (FBES). For this, it used a database from a census of the Solidarity Economy enterprises (cooperatives and selfmanaged groups), made by the federal government.
The concept of solidarity technology proposed by Dagnino (2004), points out the importance of technology to help in the collective appropriation of its results, which in the case of SI, is the information generated by its users.
Regarding the first criteria, as the social movement of Solidarity Economy is dispersed throughout Brazil, but also because FBES consider itself as legal representative of the social movement, almost no participatory methodology was used on the requirements elicitation of the SI. This may be one explanation why the use of the system by the enterprises is still low.
However, one limitation of this criterion in the case of social movements, is the care for this information does not fall into the hands of their enemies. As pointed out by Touraine (1981), in his theory of social movements and the triad IOT, one of the constitution elements of a social movement is the identification of an opposition, against whom is their struggle.
The second criteria is more problematic. The system administration is made only by developers and by FBES. There is no possibility of a collective administration, nor by regional forums, and much less by the enterprises. Thus, there is still a great centralization and reliance of the leadership.
6. Emancipatory process
The system should allow its use by a non technical user, which implies a concern with language, with ergonomics, and with cognition. For it, is essential to have manuals, tutorials, wizards and aid processes between users (support forums or chat rooms).
About the moderation process, there was always a concern about having a friendly environment, with the looks of a social networking, facilitating those who do not have the habit of using IS (which is the case of the most workers of the enterprises). In addition, FBES makes a great effort to create support communities and respond and stimulate debate. And there was an intention, not carried out due lack of resources, of having animators within the system, people who call and stimulate others to
But the key is that these processes increasingly help the user to be an expert in the system, as needed by him, and as he increases its use. This criteria is constructed from the concept of Solidarity Technologies (DAGNINO, 2004), which shows the importance of the appropriateness of these technologies by small popular enterprises and the importance of these technologies to avoid the alienation of its users. 2
participate.
every one did (it has a revision control). But the system has few aggregate reports and usage analysis features. So, as users are laymen, they make little use of access and use statistics of the portal.
Flexibility was also a widely used criteria. It was decided to develop a platform of free and open source software, called Noosfero (www.noosfero.org), which functions as a mix of social networking, content management system (CMS) and e-commerce. Thus, other systems are implemented using the same platform, creating a community development, and allowing through changes in configuration parameters (or with little programming) adjustments in the system.
On the emancipatory process, the system has a very intuitive organization (a structure similar to the Microsoft Windows Explorer) and a lot of workshops have been made so that they know how to use the features. They even do training to each other, to help organizations that have more difficulty.
The issue of transparency also has some limits. Most system data, and reports (which are few), are available only to administrators. But this issue involves the privacy of users and the issue of economic data from the enterprises, which if available to all, can be used by capitalist enterprises as a form of competition.
And finally, for the accounts of participation, there is little quantification on the participation of each organization in the portal. That is one of the reasons of some conflicts that occurred. Some organizations complain that they spend more time feeding the Web Portal, and is not fair that other organizations have the same rights as them.
On the emancipatory process, nor is there much in this direction. There are few tutorials teaching how to perform some more advanced settings, there are no wizards, nor was a careful consideration on the ergonomics and interfaces. There is just some communities and the effort to help answering any questions posted on forums.
CONCLUSIONS
Using these criteria in analyzing these two cases, it was possible to identify some of the reasons why these systems not operate effectively as a platform for building collective proposals of the members of their movements. Moreover, both have interesting features, as the process of collective management of an SI by community-based social organizations of the City of God and the ability of residents to put their demands and criticism of government action. Or the possibility that Cirandas.net gives Solidarity Economy enterprises of having a website and they can sell their products throughout Brazil.
Finally, there is very little record of users who put more content, of users who are more helpful replying others questions, and not much weight difference for users who have greater participation in the movement out of the system (excluding the case of FBES). Cidade de Deus Community Web portal
The Cidade de Deus Community Web Portal was developed using action research, involving communitybased social organizations of Cidade de Deus, and they defined their goal. There was a survey with residents, but very small compared to the total population (50 residents in a community of 60,000 people). However, unlike the case of Cirandas, the project could not afford to develop a system, so it used an existing content management system (CMS), Plone, and made some adaptations based on the objectives defined by it users.
But, if we want that an IS became forum for debate and collective construction of proposals, it would be interesting to apply these criteria since the developing of this system, and thus assess whether these criteria are sufficient to promote greater participation of its members. Participation is not something it happens spontaneously, so it needs structures and processes that intentionally creates this effect. REFERENCES
ALVEAR, C. A. S., THIOLLENT, M. Participatory Development of Technologies as a Way to Increase Community Participation: the Cidade de Deus Web Portal Case. Jounal of Community Informatics, v. 7, n. 1&2. 2011.
Although Plone has not a process of collective administration, the group through a process defined by them, and using presential meetings and a mailing list, collectively manages the portal. They created a policy that allow the organizations to put up content within some parts of the Web Portal, without having to consult the group before. But in others cases, as the main homepage, the content must be submitted to a mailing list and approved by the group. This also applies to inclusion or exclusion of users, change in the portal structure and other important changes.
BLOMBERG, J., GIACOMI, J., MOSHER, A., SWENTON-WALL, P. Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design. In: SCHULER, D.; NAMIOKA, A (Eds.). Participatory Design: Principles and practices. CRC Press, Hillsdale, NJ. 1993. BORDENAVE, J. D. O que é Participação. Editora Brasiliense, São Paulo, Brasil. 1994.
About the active moderation, some parts were created in the Web Portal to allow residents to put their opinions, critiques, questions, and the organization try to contribute to the debate and help the residents taking some complaints to the government. However, these parts do not favor a much more broader discussion, having in most cases only a few statements from residents, but hardly the construction of some debate and a collective proposal.
DAGNINO, R. A tecnologia social e seus desafios. In: LASSANCE Jr. et al. Tecnologia Social – uma estratégia para o desenvolvimento. Fundação Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. 2004. FARIA, J. H. Gestão participativa: relações de poder e de trabalho nas organizações. Atlas, São Paulo, Brasil. 2009.
On the transparency, all organizations have access to all the content put up by others, as Plone logs everything that
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MARTIN, R. C. Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA. 2002.
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SCHULER, D.; NAMIOKA, A (Eds.). Participatory Design: Principles and practices. CRC Press, Hillsdale, NJ, USA. 1993. SILVEIRA, S. A. Software livre: A luta pela liberdade do conhecimento. Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, São Paulo, Brasil. 2004.
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THIOLLENT, M. Metodologia da pesquisa-ação. Cortez, São Paulo, Brasil. 1985. TOURAINE, A. The voice and the eye: An analysis of
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