Social Collaboration and Dynamic Communities
The structure of communities and the myriad patterns of human engagement that comprise societies have always been tied fundamentally to technology. What we have long recognized as modern society (or “post-modern” in many interpretations) is inextricably connected to the technologies of the industrial revolution and their immediate successors.
Technologies of automation, electrification, transportation, and simple electronic communication make possible the social forms of modern society. Before these, the technologies of agriculture enabled a variety of social forms, just as the simple technologies of hunter-gatherers made possible cooperative communities and vast human migrations that eventually gave rise in most places to more settled agricultural communities.
The CITS Initiative on Social Collaboration and Dynamic Communities involves the efforts of a number of scholars to understand how contemporary technologies of information and communication may be contributing to a new period of rapid social innovation. We focus on the ways that technology permits new kinds of social collaboration in the public sphere, and on the consequences of emergent and dynamic community structures of all kinds.
Some of the questions we examine are:
What is the changing nature of collective action in the contemporary media environment? How can we explain instances of collaboration and collective action that appear to defy the predictions of traditional theories?
How do social movements today differ from those of the pre-Internet era?
When is “community” a less functional form than emergent collaborations focused on specific events and problems but that are temporary in nature?
How do new and old social forms interact, enhancing or eroding one another?
