University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Top-Down Approach to Providing ICT Access to Rural Communities in China: Opportunities for Community Informatics

Yu, Liangzhi; Yu, Binbin

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/46090

Description

Title
The Top-Down Approach to Providing ICT Access to Rural Communities in China: Opportunities for Community Informatics
Author(s)
  • Yu, Liangzhi
  • Yu, Binbin
Issue Date
2013
Keyword(s)
  • Community informatics
  • China
  • Rural communities
  • Information communication technology (ICT)
Abstract
Community informatics (CI)—as practiced by Western academics and social activists—was introduced to China by a group of library and information science scholars in about 2010. But before this encounter, there was already a growing push in China to connect local communities with information communication technologies (ICTs). This work is generally known in China as community or rural “informatization.” Although the new, Western-origin community informatics efforts did not completely overlook existing Chinese endeavors, they have so far done little to relate to ongoing domestic projects. This article attempts to place community informatics in relation to Chinese rural informatization programs in general, and to public access projects in particular. In the process, it examines the opportunities and challenges facing the newly imported community informatics projects. It shows that while CI brings a new perspective to Chinese endeavors, it faces a very different political, institutional, and social environment from what it has known before—one which favors a top-down approach to providing community-based ICT. This calls for prudent assessment of the relationship between CI and both rural communities and government-led projects.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/46090
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2013.0024
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 62 (1) Summer 2013: Community Informatics in China PRIMARY
Library Trends 62 (1) Summer 2013: Community Informatics in China. Edited by Kate Williams