Information Use in Communities

Researchers

• Daniel E. Atkins  Kellogg Professor of Community Information
• Joan C. Durrance  Margaret Mann Collegiate Professor of Information
• Paul N. Edwards  Associate Professor
• Robert L. Frost  Lecturer III
• Maurita Peterson Holland  Associate Professor Emerita
• Karen Markey  Professor
• Paul Resnick  Professor
• Elizabeth Yakel  Associate Professor

Current Projects

Past Projects

Alliance for Community Technology (ACT) ACT links philanthropies, universities, and communities so that people can use information and collaboration technologies to meet social needs. The program is committed to a human-centered focus on the creation, use, evaluation, and propagation of appropriate technologies in support of communities, whether these communities are defined by geography, organizational structure, or common interest. ACT is a partnership of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the School of Information. Contact: Daniel Atkins (atkins@umich.edu)

Approaches for Understanding Community Information Use Researchers gather data to better understand the information-seeking behavior of consumers and to identify best practices in the provision of community information and community services. Contact: Joan Durrance (durrance@umich.edu)

Assessment of Application Service Providers Focused on Nonprofits Client surveys are used to detect the effects of application service provider use on nonprofits and to assess clients' sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the services provided. Contact: Thomas Finholt (finholt@umich.edu)

BetterTogether BetterTogether was an initiative of the Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. BetterTogether.org provided interactive opportunities to celebrate the new and better ways that Americans are connecting and offered tools that make it easier for them to do so. An "interactive portrait of civic America" was developed at SI. Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)

Building SocioTechnical Capital Social resources like trust and shared identity make it easier for people to work and play together. Such social resources are sometimes referred to as social capital. Thirty years ago, Americans built social capital as a side effect of participation in civic organizations and social activities, including bowling leagues. Today, they do so far less frequently (Putnam 2000). Human-computer interaction researchers and practitioners need to find new ways for people to interact that will generate even more social capital than bowling together does. A new theoretical construct, SocioTechnical Capital, provides a framework for generating and evaluating technology-mediated social relations. The goal of building SocioTechnical Capital has prompted several projects. First, several years ago, SI explored the potential impacts of neighborhood photo directories, and conducted a field trial to test the impacts. Second, researchers are developing and pilot testing ride sharing services that dynamically match riders with rides. The research focuses on how to motivate participation and reduce coordination costs in such services, as well as the scalability, extensibility, and privacy implications of different system architectures. The paper on Impersonal SocioTechnical Capital puts the idea in context. A scenario document, in draft form, is also available. Researchers are also investigating the impact of "convening technologies" that help introduce people to others and/or coordinate their convenings. In the summer of 2004, research assistants attended Meetup.com events in seven cities around the U.S. (a joint project with Bob Kraut at Carnegie Mellon University, and Bob Putnam, Rob Sampson, and Tom Sander at Harvard University.) They would like to understand who goes, what happens, and what the social capital side effects are. Researchers also would like to be able to characterize the novel technical and organizational elements that are at work and which might be recombined in different ways in different services. Doctoral students Libby Hemphill and Rick Wash also participate in this research. Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)

Center for Highly Interactive Classrooms, Curricula & Computing in Education (Hi-Ce) Members of the Hi-Ce research team develop learner-centered software tools and curriculum founded on the pedagogy of inquiry, or project-based science. Researchers work as partners with teachers and administrators to integrate technology into K-12 classrooms. Contact: Eliot Soloway (soloway@umich.edu)

Collaboratory on Technology Enhanced Learning Communities (CoTelCo) The project provided an interactive collaboratory environment in which its U.S. and South Africa participants could explore geographically distributed collaborative learning and complex, cross-national virtual teams. The project was supported by the Alliance for Community Technology and the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work at the School of Information; Microsoft Research; and UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Contact: Derrick Cogburn (dcogburn@umich.edu)

Community Connector The project served as a valuable resource for community networks and community information systems by maintaining an online journal, a major directory of community networks, a collection of relevant online articles and research, and many examples of projects and resources developed by nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and others arranged by topics of interest to communities. The Connector was designed and maintained by a team of School of Information students who worked with Professor Joan C. Durrance. Contact: Joan Durrance (durrance@umich.edu)

CommunityLab: Motivating Contribution to the Public Good in Online Communities Researchers draw on theories and data from social psychology and public goods economics to drive design decisions about online communities. Their goal is to increase participants' contributions to the communal good. This is joint work with Bob Kraut, Sara Kiesler, Loren Terveen, John Riedl, and Joe Konstan, funded by the National Science Foundation. The first paper from this project, describing campaigns to try to encourage members of MovieLens to submit more ratings, was presented at the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2004 conference. As predicted by theory, individuals contributed more when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and moderately challenging goals, but other predictions were not borne out. In particular, a puzzling result was that reminding individuals that their ratings help either themselves or others prompted fewer rather than more ratings. For information on other work that is part of this project, see the CommunityLab Web site. Also participating in this research are doctoral students Xiaomu Zhou of the School of Information and Xin Li of the Department of Economics. Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)

Design of Reputation Systems A reputation system gives people information about others' past performance. It can enhance an online interaction environment by helping people decide whom to trust, encouraging people to be more trustworthy, and discouraging those who are not trustworthy from participating. This project has employed game theoretic analysis to model the impact of name changes on the functioning of reputation systems. The SI analysis demonstrated an inherent social cost of cheap pseudonyms and also proposed cryptographic techniques for allowing anonymous but unchangeable pseudonyms. Researchers have also conducted empirical analysis of eBay's feedback system, showing that reputations are informative for buyers and by performing a controlled field experiment to test the impact of reputation on seller revenues. Current analyses focus on the impact of prior feedback on feedback-giving strategies for buyers, and on seller participation decisions. A second line of inquiry has focused on the provision of feedback. In The Market for Evaluations, researchers analyzed the possibilities for incentive mechanisms in which later consumers compensate early evaluators of an item, concluding that any two of three desirable properties could be achieved. That paper also predicted that, in the absence of incentive mechanisms, items that get poor early evaluations may become buried treasures that never receive additional evaluations. In empirical work on usage of the Web site Slashdot, the research team found that certain kinds of messages, including those that get early negative evaluations, tend not to get enough attention from moderators. Slashdot is introducing changes in its moderation system partially in response to those findings. Even if an optimal allocation of evaluators is made, incentives may still be required to induce effort and honest reporting of those evaluations. The team has designed mechanisms, based on proper scoring rules, to elicit effort and honest reporting of numeric ratings. Current work focuses on extending these mechanisms to situations where evaluators choose which items to evaluate, and on field trials of the scoring system with academic reviewing processes. This project is joint work with Richard Zeckhauser. Participating in this research are SI doctoral students Tapan Khopkar and Cliff Lampe. Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)

Evaluating The Effectiveness of Interactive Multimedia for Library-User Education (LUMENS) This demonstration project trains librarians to build interactive, multimedia Web sites for library user education and to evaluate these sites to determine their effectiveness. The project includes a large-scale, distance-education training effort for librarians. Contact: Karen Markey (ylime@umich.edu)

Extending and Integrating a Digital Government Research Agenda Project members are developing a theoretically informed and empirically grounded research program in the field of digital government (roughly, efforts to improve efficiency, performance, accountability, and democratic participation in the public sector through the appropriate and forward-thinking application of information technologies). Researchers are mapping current work in the digital government field, identifying and preparing a preliminary set of potential research sites, and selecting and developing one of the preliminary sites into a fully developed proof-of-concept case study. Contact: Steven Jackson (sjackso@umich.edu)

Genealogists and the Management of Meaning Genealogy and family history are examples of everyday life information-seeking and personal information management. This study examines the genealogical research, organization, and interpretative processes which should be viewed as an ongoing process of seeking, managing, and passing on meaning. Contact: Beth Yakel (yakel@umich.edu)

Health FACTS Health FACTS supports online health communities through mechanisms that facilitate relationship building and information sharing. The primary innovations relate to the collaborative creation of an information archive generated from messages that have been nominated from an ongoing conversation. Key components of the system include the socio-technical process for selecting messages that should be added to the archive, a mechanism for organizing the information, and a pervasive recommender system used to build relationships and find relevant information. Doctoral student Derek Hansen conducts this research. Contact: Derek Hansen (shakmatt@umich.edu)

How Libraries and Librarians Help This two-year study helped libraries nationwide evaluate and improve community information-based services for the public. The researchers designed a suite of Web-based evaluation tools that public librarians can use to measure the effectiveness of their digital community information services. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the project, which built on a previous IMLS grant, "Help-Seeking in an Electronic World." Contact: Joan Durrance (durrance@umich.edu)

III-CXT: Digital Tribal Government: The Tribal Information Clearinghouse (TFIC) Based on preliminary work completed as part of an NSF planning grant (IIS 0534905), the proposed project will produce new digital content helping tribal governments create, integrate, and share financial information. Because most tribes confront information asymmetries for any particular debt financing strategy they might consider, an empirical study of successful information sharing and integration strategies for tax-exempt bonds will help identify suitable strategies to induce sharing in other domains where tribes operate at an informational disadvantage. Contact: Gavin Clarkson (gsmc@umich.edu)

Information Diffusion and Evolution in Online Communities Internet communication technologies have created not only an unprecedented opportunity for individuals and communities to disseminate and filter information, but also for researchers the study these processes. Researchers on this project are building predictive models of information spread in blog and tagging networks, drawing on their previous work identifying network and information characteristics that influence information diffusion. Their focus is on the effect of densely connected communities and their boundaries, as well as the magnitude and location of changes in information as it spreads through the network. Contact: Lada Adamic (ladamic@umich.edu)

Inter-Governmental Tracking System (IGTS) As inter-governmental activity increases, the importance of information flow management increases. When the information flow is between governments of differing size or power, informational asymmetry can place the weaker/smaller government at a distinct disadvantage. These information flows cover a multitude of activities, including law enforcement, environmental regulation, and other regulatory matters. Often, when the weaker/smaller government depends upon the larger/powerful government, important matters referred by the weaker/smaller government to the larger/powerful government are left unaddressed, as if they had disappeared into a black hole. As the power imbalance increases, the ability for the smaller/weaker government to demand information accountability decreases. This issue is particularly salient and problematic in the context of American Indian tribal governments. Tribal governments are independent sovereigns, separate from the states, but subordinate to the federal government. Despite recent congressional policies emphasizing self-determination, Supreme Court rulings have constrained the feasible scope of self-determination, and in certain areas tribes remain wholly dependent on the federal government. It is in these areas of dependency that the information asymmetries have potentially devastating consequences for both the tribes themselves as well as tribal members. Tribal prosecutors must refer crimes involving non-Indian defendants and Indian victims to the federal government to prosecute; yet when they refer such cases, federal authorities usually decline to prosecute, and the tribe is rarely kept informed. This project will examine the intergovernmental information flows in two such areas: domestic violence and child sexual abuse. The project will also develop significant technological policy and infrastructure foundations for empowering tribal governments to assert control over these criminal justice matters within tribal territories. The results of this examination will guide the development of an inter-governmental tracking system that will empower the tribes to demand a greater level of accountability for matters referred to federal authorities. Contact: Gavin Clarkson (gsmc@umich.edu)

Internet on the Air (IOTA) This innovative, weekly radio program was committed to timely, thoughtful news related to the Internet and digital technology. Shows focused on social, economic, and policy issues surrounding the Internet and included profiles of innovative programs and technological developments. The Internet on the Air Web site offers RealAudio and text transcripts of past shows, a bibliography of useful sites related to each week's topic, and excerpts from interviews with many of the guests. Contact: Maurita Holland (mholland@umich.edu)

KatrinaHousing.Net: The Housing Information Gateway In the days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, a team of faculty and students set about building a system to aggregate all of the temporary housing offers dispersed across the Web into one site with an easy-to-use map interface built on the Google Map API. Contact: Paul Resnick (presnick@umich.edu)

Learning Collaboratory The Learning Collaboratory provided evaluative information on and testbed versions of collaborative technologies for use by education and small businesses. The project was funded by SBC Communications and was conducted in partnership with units at all three U-M campuses. Contact: Joseph Hardin (hardin@umich.edu)

Next Generation Finding Aids The Next Generation Finding Aids project seeks to explore the full potential of the Web to publish information about and digitize portions of archival collections. Current online finding aids are inadequate, merely reproducing paper finding aids without taking advantage of their electronic environment. The digital realm allows for quick searching, interlinking, folksonomy, participation and collaboration, and interfaces beyond text, techniques a paper finding aid cannot do. While many repositories and archives employ EAD (or encoded archival description) in their online finding aids, no one has yet to take full advantage of all of the properties that EAD has to offer. This research project expands the capability of EAD, making the archival and research experience collaborative and participatory, and challenging the traditional finding aid structure and functionality. The first full-scale prototype is the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections.

Perspectives and Information for a Balanced Approach to Information and Communications Technology In response to a request from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Information and Communication Technology Steering Committee, SI researchers (both faculty and graduate students) gathered and reported information on current thinking about potential or observed negative impacts of information and communication technology (ICT). The findings will help Kellogg's staff build a balanced approach to funding proposals that include substantial ICT components. Contact: Paul Edwards (pne@umich.edu)

Sakai This community-source software development effort aims to design, build, and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment for higher education. The project began in January 2004 and is a collaboration among the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. The Open Knowledge Initiative and the uPortal consortium also play major roles. The project's primary goal is to deliver the Sakai application framework and associated content management tools and components that are designed to work together. These components are for course management, and, as an augmentation of the original content management model, they also support research collaboration. The software is designed to be competitive with the best content management software available and is being built by designers, software architects, and developers at different institutions, using an experimental variation of an open-source development model called the community source model. Contact: Joseph Hardin (hardin@umich.edu)

Tribal Finance Information Clearinghouse (TFIC) American Indian tribal governments provide a wide range of services to their tribal members, but providing these services requires funding. Tribes have historically been limited in their ability to access capital, and this reality has been a major barrier to economic development in the Native American community. To identify factors that constrain tribes from tapping into the capital markets effectively, however, the academic and policy-making communities need a thorough understanding of modern tribal finance contexts. Non-Indian governments and academics studying the capital markets related to those governmental entities have access to substantial information systems, but no such system exists for tribal governments. Not only are Tribes at an informational disadvantage, but credit insurers and rating agencies, such as Moody's, are also unable to view a complete picture of the tribal finance market. Thus, tribes must pay a significant penalty on tribal financings because of the uncertainty caused by the lack of data. This cross-disciplinary project examines questions related to technological empowerment that have economic, sociological, and legal implications. To conduct research on the tribal finance marketplace, it is necessary to collect original data about tribal interaction with the capital markets and to develop an information system capable of storing, analyzing, and disseminating that data. The TFIC will initially contain three information sets: a historical account of tribal finance from 1980 to the present, specifically identifying and focusing on the seminal events in the marketplace; a database of all tribal municipal financings that have taken place from 1980 to the present; and a similar database of high-yield financings by tribes and Indian-owned enterprises for the same period. The TFIC will facilitate a comprehensive understanding of tribal interaction with the capital markets, specifically identifying those factors that are critical to the success of tribes as minority enterprises. Moreover, the completed project databases offer academic researchers and policy-makers an unparalleled opportunity to analyze a complete data set related to a significant minority group and to determine which variables presently impact capital markets access for tribes. Contact: Gavin Clarkson (gsmc@umich.edu)

Understanding Open Software Communities, Processes, and Practices: A Socio-Technical Approach Researchers are developing both empirical models and theory of the social processes, technical system configurations, and organizational contexts -- and the interrelationships among these -- that give rise to open (or more narrowly, open-source) software. This cross-institution project investigates four communities engaged in the production, use, and evolution of open software. The Michigan portion primarily examines the astrophysics community and conducts interviews with commercial programmers for comparitive purposes. The goal is to discover why software engineers participate in open and scientific software projects. The range of personal choices that go into such decisions is only partly portrayed in the popular media. This project seeks to examine those choices and structures that influence how such software is socially constructed. Contact: Mark Ackerman (ackerm@umich.edu)

Using Technology to Combat Violence Against Women: The Case for Indian Country Indian women are victimized at astonishingly higher rates than the rest of society. Non-Indian men are overwhelmingly the offenders in these cases. Because of Supreme Court rulings, when tribal police are called to a domestic violence incident, they cannot arrest the offender if he is non-Indian, nor can the tribal prosecutor bring charges. The tribe's only recourse in these cases is to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney, who often declines to prosecute. This project examines the intergovernmental information flows when domestic violence cases are referred to federal prosecutors. Researchers are devloping significant technological policy and infrastructure foundations for empowering tribal governments. The results of that examination will guide the development of an Inter-Governmental Tracking System (IGTS) that will empower the tribes to assert control and demand greater accountability from federal prosecutors regarding domestic violence matters within tribal territories. Contact: Gavin Clarkson (gsmc@umich.edu)