C. A. Le Dantec. Considering the rights (and wrongs) of community technology. interactions, 19(4):24–27, 2012.

Abstract

In the past year, a number of landmark events have underscored some of the fundamental changes occurring in how we construct and interact as communities, and in the diversity of various sites for civic action. Social media has been tagged as a great instigator and supporter of movements like the Jasmine Revolution, the widespread civil unrest in the U.K., and the Occupy movement across the U.S. The scale and breadth of these events have led many to focus, with new energy, on the role that communication technologies play in our communities. The rise and pervasiveness of social media have engendered new means of organiz- ing social movements, enabling massive local action while affording a level of transparency and global awareness that were novel, and in some cases, literally revolutionary. One of the consequences of these events was renewed advocacy to consider access to the technologies that amplified and made visible these social movements a right—in particular, to consider Internet access a basic human right.