Call for Papers



Following the success of three prior conferences, we cordially invite submissions to the Fourth International Conference on Communities and Technologies (C&T 2009), hosted by The Pennsylvania State University. This biennial meeting serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating research on the complex connections between communities - both physical and virtual - and information and communication technologies.

C&T 2009 welcomes participation of researchers, designers, educators, and students from the many disciplines and perspectives bearing on the interaction between community and technology. These areas include anthropology, art and architecture, business, cognitive science, communication studies, community informatics, computer science, design studies, education, ergonomics, geography, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information science, information systems, industrial engineering, interaction design, journalism, knowledge management, law, learning science, linguistics and semiotics, management, psychology, requirements engineering, sociology, software engineering, technical communication, and user experience design.

The conference program includes competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as workshops, tutorials, a doctoral consortium, and invited speakers.

Conference Themes

There are many definitions of community. We focus on the notion of communities as social entities comprised of actors who share something in common; this common element may be geography, needs, interests, practices, organizations, or other bases for social connection. Communities are considered to be a basic unit of social experience. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can interact with communities in many complex ways. For example, ICTs can support community formation and development by facilitating communication and coordination among members. Conversely, the lack of attention to the surrounding community context may inhibit the design and effective use of ICT innovations. Hence, new research into the creation, use, and evaluation of ICTs aimed at community support is appearing at an increasing rate. New phenomena such as blogs, podcasting, smart mobs, and the popularity of social network software illustrate some of the new areas for research into the powerful and changing connections between community and technology.

Empirical, conceptual, and design contributions are invited, involving a range of methodologies encompassing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. These might include application designs, innovative frameworks, case studies, ethnographies, experiments, survey research, network analyses, or economic studies.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference are manifold. Examples of some of the vibrant areas of communities and technology research include, but are not limited to:
  • (Virtual) community formation and development
  • Communities of interest, communities of practice, knowledge sharing and organizational learning
  • Communities and innovation
  • Community informatics
  • Technical support for communities
  • Innovative applications of communityware
  • Ad hoc communities and ICTs
  • Innovations in community technology design
  • System platforms for e-community research
  • Design methods for communityware
  • ICTs and geographical business communities (e.g. clusters and/or regional development)
  • ICTs and virtual business communities
  • Community-oriented e-commerce business models
  • Social capital, communities, and technology
  • Interactions between online and offline communities
  • Communities and e-government
  • Ethnographic and case studies of virtual communities
  • Trust, privacy and security issues in virtual communities
  • Communities, technology and social movements
  • Interaction in large scale online communities
  • Persistent conversation in technology-facilitated communities
  • Supporting collaboration in local and distributed communities
  • Economics of technology-facilitated communities
  • Inter-organizational communities and technology
  • Communities, technology, and learning/education
Format

Please format papers in ACM format. Papers must be no longer than ten pages, including all additional material such as references, appendices, and figures. Full papers must include a title, sufficient space for the author name(s) to appear on the paper, contact information and affiliations, abstract, keywords, body, and references.

Please note: When submitting a paper, be sure to include key words. Below is a list of recommended key words to get you started. However, you may also use other key words as applicable to your content.

Access
Activity theory
Ad hoc communities and ICTs
Affect & computing
Altruism
Analysis of collective practices
Applications for underserved users
Approaches to social design
Appropriation
Barriers to access
Blending communities with other services
Business clusters
Business communities
Campaigning groups
Case studies
Civic informatics
Civic network design
Civic participation
Cohesion
Collaboration
Collaboration/communication processes
Collaborative learning
Collaborative sensemaking
Collective Goods
Communities and e-government
Communities of caregivers
Communities of patients
Communities of practice
Community engineering/building
Community formation and development
Community group cohesion
Community informatics
Community lifecycle
Community management
Community mining
Community networking
Community of passion
Community of practice
Community support as socio-technical design
Community wireless networks
Communityware
Computer-mediated communication
Cooperation
Creativity
Culture and Computing
Design
Design and evaluation processes
Design for communities not community design
Design issues of technologies for community (especially, persona and scenario based design)
Design WITH communities
Digital democracy
Digital government
Digitally mediated self-presentation
Distributed and mobile computing
Distributed care
Distributed creativity
Economics of technology-facilitated communities
Educational communities
E-Learning
Empathy
End-user development
Enterprise
Establishing social capital
Ethnographic and case studies of virtual communities
Ethnography
Evaluation methods
Expertise sharing
Facilitation of communities
Forming and maintaining social relationships
Gender
Gender and Technology
Healthcare and communities (healthcare network
ICTD
ICT4D
Identity
Inequality
Information quality of communities
Information Visualization
Innovation communities/crowd sourcing
Interaction in large scale online communities
Interactions between online and offline communities
Intercultural communication/collaboration
Intercultural communication/cooperation
Interdisciplinary design
Intrapersonal conflict
IT and organizational change
Knowledge managament and knowledge sharing
Knowledge management
Knowledge management in communities
Latin American applications of ICT
Learning
Learning community
Marginalization
Materiality of digital artifacts
Media and new media policy
Mediated communication
Medical issues such as doctor-patient network
Metrics
Motivation and incentives for participation
Network of practice
Online communities
Online health care groups
Online social network sites
Open community
Participatory design
Perceptions of others via online representations (platform) integration
Privacy
Public interest
Qualitative research
Question-answer forums
Reflective practice
Requirements engineering for social computing
Scientific collaboratories
Sentiment mining
Shared practice
Social bookmarking
Social capital and social networks
Social capital, communities, and technology
Social capital management
Social computing
Social influence
Social networks
Social network analysis
Social networks/social media/social technology
Social presence
Social regulation
Social roles in large communities
Social/collective identity-building
Socio-technical approaches
Socio-technical systems
Sociotechnical systems and design
Support for innovation
Sustainability/environmental sustainability/green HCI
Technical-infrastructure
Technology & the third sector
Technology in developing regions
Technology-enhanced workplace learning
Tourism communities
Ubiquitous user interfaces
Urban informatics/urban technology/urban media
Usability issues of technologies for community
User driven innovation
User innovation communities
Virtual and face-to-face-interaction/hybrid communication
Virtual community
Virtual worlds
Visualization
Visualization techniques for community
(Virtual) community formation and development
Web 2.0
Youth
Proceedings

TBA

Conference Organizers and Contact Information

The 2009 meeting is being organized by Jack Carroll of The Pennsylvania State University. Questions regarding C&T 2009 should be sent to the conference email address: jcarroll@ist.psu.edu.