{"id":420,"date":"2011-04-15T09:05:59","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T09:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=420"},"modified":"2011-04-15T11:59:49","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T11:59:49","slug":"metaphors-for-democratic-communication-spaces-new-academic-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Metaphors for Democratic Communication Spaces: New Academic Article"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just published an article in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication<\/a> : Democratizing Communication Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters. The issue was edited by the fabulous Professor Shade<\/a> and Dr Becky Lentz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My article is called “Metaphors for Democratic Communication Spaces”<\/strong> and argues that how decision-makers talk about communications infrastructure is as important as the architectural decisions they make in rolling it out.\u00a0 Decision-makers, even when they understand that the impacts of communications infrastructure are partly related to how consumers adopt it, still often expect that the technology will be a “magic bullet.”\u00a0 So instead of thinking about how to create more democratic (or public interest) spaces through citizen participation, decision-makers stick with “build it and they will come.” The paper compares two Canadian public Wi-Fi projects, the \u00cele Sans Fil project in Montreal, and the Fred-eZone project in Fredericton. It concludes that both go some way to creating democratic communication spaces, but that they could go further by using language and practices (like co-design) that let citizens participate in imagining how new technology will impact their cities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s the academic version of the abstract:<\/p>\n

Communications policies, like many other social policies, are founded on an
\nideal of democracy that connects the development of communication infrastructures with
\ndemocratic public spheres. This framing is a constructivist endeavour that takes place through
\nlanguage, institution, and infrastructure. Projects that aim to develop these capacities must
\ngrapple with the way such new media technologies are integrated into existing contexts or
\nspaces, often using metaphors. This paper analyzes how such metaphors are employed in
\nthe case of local wireless networking. Referring to empirical research on networks located in
\nMontr\u00e9al and Fredericton, Canada, the paper critiques the narrow approach to democratization
\nof communication spaces inherent in networks of this type. This narrow focus is associated
\nwith metaphors used to describe a co-evolution of wireless technology and urban space.
\nThe paper identifies that the design processes that shape these networks could benefit from
\na more radical democratization associated with metaphors of recombination of space and
\ntechnology.<\/p>\n

A previous version is online as an SSRN Working Paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just published an article in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication : Democratizing Communication Policy in the Americas: Why It Matters. The issue was edited by the fabulous Professor Shade and Dr Becky Lentz.   My article is called “Metaphors for Democratic Communication Spaces” and argues that how decision-makers talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pUfdR-6M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":424,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}