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Hometown websites: continuous maintenance of cross-border connections

Published: 25 June 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) become particularly relevant in contexts where place-based communities get dispersed and migrants look for ways to keep strong connections to the homeland. This paper presents the case of a website currently being used by migrants and non-migrants of a dispersed community to keep in touch with each other as well as to keep connected with daily life in their hometown. In particular, this work aims to understand the main types of information conveyed as well as temporal patterns of community exchanges as afforded by the website. This work analyses and classifies Guestbook entries, Photos and News notes suggesting that people use the site to reconnect, strengthen their local identity and be part of community life. We found out that user-generated content tend to increase during periods when there are fewer visits to the website. Results presented here are relevant towards understanding the nature and role played by ICTs in maintaining cross-border connections.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    C&T '09: Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Communities and technologies
    June 2009
    306 pages
    ISBN:9781605587134
    DOI:10.1145/1556460
    • General Chair:
    • John M. Carroll
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 25 June 2009

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    Author Tags

    1. community informatics
    2. diasporic websites
    3. interactions between online and offline communities

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    C&T '09
    C&T '09: Communities and Technologies
    June 25 - 27, 2009
    PA, University Park, USA

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    • (2017)A Sociotechnical Study of a Community-based Rewards ProgramProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/31346901:CSCW(1-21)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2017
    • (2017)Learning HCI Across Institutions, Disciplines and Countries16th IFIP TC 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction --- INTERACT 2017 - Volume 1051610.1007/978-3-319-68059-0_13(198-217)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2017
    • (2014)City, self, networkProceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing10.1145/2531602.2531693(1502-1510)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2014
    • (2012)Transnational Families and Social Technologies: Reassessing Immigration PsychologyJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies10.1080/1369183X.2012.69821138:9(1425-1438)Online publication date: Nov-2012
    • (2011)Virtualizing Intimacy: Information Communication Technologies and Transnational Families in TherapyFamily Process10.1111/j.1545-5300.2010.01343.x50:1(12-26)Online publication date: Mar-2011

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