Mark Gaved : Research
"Promoting sustained use of ICT through grassroots initiated networked communities and social software"
Supervisors: Paul Mulholland and Zdenek Zdrahal
PhD start date: 01 February 2003
I'm researching local communities who have worked together to build a computer network infrastructure in order to provide affordable and sustainable access to the internet and to help the sharing and storing of information within and beyond their neighbourhood.
I propose that this might be a useful way for communities to overcome the 'digital divide'. Furthermore the community itself may benefit from increased interaction. I believe the development of such a network will supplement, rather than supplant, existing forms of communication.
In my first year I surveyed a group of UK networked communities to find out what they had done, and why. I spent my second year focussing more on software applications that can support communication - the so called "social software". I'm now writing up....
Interests: Community networks, social software, accessible web design
My bookshelf (testing a small project I am working on with Tom Heath) is here