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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ian JohnsonORCiD, Dr Vasilis Vlachokyriakos
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Access to the internet and digital technology are reported determinants and enablers of social capital and community resilience. However, despite rural areas facing ecological, social, and economic uncertainties across the world, communication technologies and the design of civic technologies in HCI are not designed with the rural in mind. In this paper, we explore information infrastructures within and across rural villages in the UK focusing on the interplay between human, social, and technical infrastructures. We report on the existing communication practices, underlining the impacts of transitioning to digital communication technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings point to the fragility of information infrastructure, the “civic duty” of bridging information and skills gaps, and the role of technology as a threat to social norms and disrupter of the ‘politics of the rural’. The work presented here has implications for Rural HCI researchers and designers interested in design from the rural.
Author(s): Johnson IG, Vlachokryiakos V
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Year: 2024
Volume: 8
Issue: CSCW1
Online publication date: 26/04/2024
Acceptance date: 01/11/2023
Date deposited: 30/04/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2573-0142
Publisher: ACM
URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3637400
DOI: 10.1145/3637400
Data Access Statement: Data supporting this publication is openly available under an 'Open Data Commons Open Database License'. Additional metadata are available at: 10.25405/data.ncl.24793632. Please contact Newcastle Research Data Service at rdm@ncl.ac.uk for access instructions.
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