Letting the grass grow: grassroots information on blogs and wikis

Ramos, Miguel Ángel Moreno; Piper, Paul

doi:10.1108/00907320610716459

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Librarians have long recognized their obligation to make the crossing. Indeed, the call for "risking relevant reference" from the user's perspective is well established [48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55]. Nevertheless, the risk here could literally lead to direct physical consequences.…”

Section: Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case of Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Westbrook

2008

The Library Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The pervasive, personal crisis of intimate partner violence (IPV) demands community information resources in workforce, health care, mental health, public housing, criminal justice, and social service arenas. Although generally underutilized, public libraries have a pivotal role to play as the only public institution specifically structured to support community information access. In order to provide effective service, however, librarians must understand the information complexities of the IPV context. This study triangulates two populations and two data-gathering techniques in an effort to provide a deeper understanding of survivors' information needs. The first segment analyzes the information issues of IPV survivors in an active bulletin board (BB) community; the second segment utilizes in-depth interviews with 57 individuals (safe-house staff, survivors, and police officers) in ten Texas cities. The information experiences were analyzed in the context of public library service and in light of Everyday Life Information Seeking theory. This paper first examines the information-related experiences of IPV survivors, and then examines the potential of public library support for this vulnerable population. Based on triangulated data from one study of online exchanges and a second study of survivors, shelter staff, and police, this paper helps map the complex information arena of IPV survivors in light of public library support opportunities. Context of Intimate Partner Violence Demographics. Almost 5.3 million victimizations by intimate partners occur every year among U.S. women age 18 and older [1]. This violence crosses all social, economic, educational, racial, and cultural boundaries; however certain groups suffer most. Severe 4 4 IPV attacks are four to six times as common among Black and Hispanic couples as their White counterparts [2, p. 1039], and women who live below the poverty line and young women are more likely to be abused [3, 4]. IPV has a disproportionate impact on those lacking financial independence, the means to sustain themselves day-today. Nor do they have access to legal resources, which materially affects their ability to prevail in both civil and criminal courts [5]. Many lack financial self-sufficiency after years of being prevented from gaining an education and/or job; many also have primary financial and parenting responsibilities for young children [6]. Health. Women with a history of domestic violence victimization have significantly more physical and mental health problems than do other women [7]. Survivors frequently suffer the effects of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder [8] and they have 50% to 70% more problems with their physical health [7, p. 1157] than their counterparts. Trying to leave. Simply reporting the abuse, much less leaving the abuser, can be extremely difficult for many survivors [9; 10, p. 1089; 11]. Judgmental responses from police and social service agencies to survivors' help-seeking efforts can actually undermine healing [12] and leave survivors feeli...

show abstract

Section: Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case of Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Westbrook

2008

The Library Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to Ramos and Piper (2006), these applications represent the most current iteration of user-driven tools, resources and power, where expertise emerges from the combined efforts of many, rather than being in the hands of a few. Democratization seems, in these claims, to be understood as everyone who is willing and able to contribute to a website (in whatever form) having an equal say and information coming from these various sources being given equal consideration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintaining the collision of accounts: crowdsourcing sites in health care as brokers in the co-production of pharmaceutical knowledge

Adams

2013

Information, Communication & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since the development of the World Wide Web led to public access to the internet in the early 1990s, the technology has been accompanied with promises about the democratization of knowledge. Claims that more citizens can be heard in more (effective) ways, ultimately bringing society closer to participatory and democratized knowledge production have grown even stronger with the increasing popularity of so-called 'Web 2.0' applications and 'social media'. Such claims seem to suggest that the possibility of making an active contribution automatically leads to everyone having an equal say, where information coming from various sources is given equal consideration. The implications of this suggestion are especially important for fields such as medicine and health care, where expertise is primarily considered to fall under a professional domain that privileges evidence-based knowledge (i.e. developed during randomized controlled trials) as the only 'valid' form of knowledge on which to base practice. In this article, the author examines claims regarding democratization of knowledge production in relation to the practice of crowdsourcingwhere tasks such as problem-solving and quality control are 'outsourced' via the Web to specific target groups ('the crowd')in the specific context of health care. Drawing on a study of the site www.mijnmedicijn.nl ('my medicine'), the author questions how the mediating/knowledge brokering role of such sites influences the nature and structure of the information exchange on the site. How does the information produced via such sites 'fit' with existing information/knowledge hierarchies and infrastructures? How do Web 2.0 sites/ applications simultaneously complement/reinforce and challenge traditional forms of knowledge production?

show abstract

“…Wikis, for example, offer a unique open-source collaborative space where an academic can produce a collaborative document, bringing together research threads from other academics, practitioners, or policy makers, or by having a`comments' space (see Ramos and Piper, 2006). The potential for interactive peer review can widen an academic's influence and increase academic impact through increased citation (Correia and Teixeira, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other benefits include: rapid dissemination of knowledge to a wider audience; faster communication between academia and industry; the ability to use multimedia to support and enhance word documents; and the opportunity to learn from other's experiencesösuccesses and failures (Correia and Teixeira, 2005). Although vulnerable to abuse, the group ethos in wikis largely ensures that the`living' document is developed through monitoring and correction, blocking deviant users, or even limiting access (Ramos and Piper, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Weblogs, or blogs, provide both individuals and institutions with an effective and intuitive means of collecting and organizing, as well as transmitting, insights and opinions on any subject (Dearstyne, 2005). Blogs can incorporate text, images, audio, and video, being of three general types: (i) aggregators that connect other blog postings from various digital media; (ii) personal narratives; (iii) a synthesis of the two (Ramos and Piper, 2006). Academics can use a blog for specific intragroup communication (for example within a special interest group), enabling members from diverse locations to report on ongoing events, or respond to particular events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

On Becoming a Mediatizing Don and Claiming the New Spatial Boundaries of Academia

Palmer

Simmons

2011

Environ Plan A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Letting the grass grow: grassroots information on blogs and wikis

Cited by 19 publications

References 2 publications

Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case of Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Understanding Crisis Information Needs in Context: The Case of Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

Maintaining the collision of accounts: crowdsourcing sites in health care as brokers in the co-production of pharmaceutical knowledge

On Becoming a Mediatizing Don and Claiming the New Spatial Boundaries of Academia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About