Local information services in Medellin: Technology, institutions, communities and power

Abstract

This article examines the politics of technology and information by exploring a case study of local information service provision in Medellin, Colombia. Local Information Service (LIS) is defined as a community centre where information deemed relevant to local communities is generated, stored, organized and disseminated through print and digital means. Using a social construction of technology approach, the article attempts to deconstruct the implementation and delivery of LIS in Medellin, Colombia and analyse how empowering and disempowering discourses form through relationships between institutions and citizens laden with social and economic inequality. The article analyses the development and deployment of this artefact and positions LIS as a socio-technical system, embedded with political, social, cultural, and economic values. We describe the unintended consequences of this deployment through a multilevel perspective of the head organisation and the smaller 195 local institutions that support it. The article challenges and operationalises the social construction of 'local' in local information by highlighting practices of social exclusion and resistance embedded within the design of the service. This case provides a vantage point from which to examine how relevant social groups interpret and engage with technological devices and the implications of this for the communities the device is intended to serve.

Shaping local information in Thailand: Hidden contradictions in the digitisation activities of the Provincial University Library Network (PULINET)

“…The conceptions portray an understanding of LI as culture-nature integrated local wisdom and history, collectively generated and preserved in situ , with strong applied-use value for present and future everyday life activities (c.f. Benyei et al, 2020; UNESCO, 2009; Van Klyton and Castaño-Muñoz, 2017). The actual digitisation activities of the LIWG, however, introduce a number of restrictions to these broad and inclusive conceptions.…”

“…As indicated by this discussion, the political entanglements of LI in Thailand run deep and broad. Nevertheless, there are few empirical studies of national and community level projects similar to the digitisation of LI in Thailand (Benyei et al, 2020;Van Klyton and Castaño-Muñoz, 2017). In the Thai context the issue remains largely unexplored in an international, library and information science perspective (c.f.…”

Digital local information services in developing countries: Evidence from Colombia

“…The internal-capacities related items (1 and 3) are tied to perceived institutional capacity to respond to the needs of different user age groups. This capacity deficit was described in van Klyton et al (2017), where they show that while Infolocal was using restrictive 1.0 webpages to disseminate local content (i.e., one-sided communication), users were already using Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. Facebook and Twitter).…”

“…The disjunctions also arose because of the differences in meaning attributed to the service by these different stakeholder groups (Bijker, 1997). van Klyton et al (2017) argued that because the Colombian government began its own capacity building activities for Colombian citizens to access online information individually, Infolocal ’s layering of new technologies onto its system did little to halt diminishing demand. In addition, the local institutions began directing their own information to mass audiences online through web 2.0 tools, further enabling digital autonomy for end users.…”

“…Infolocal began in 1991 as a paper-based, user-focused system. It is one of oldest functioning local information services in Latin America and served as a model for information practice across the continent (van Klyton and Castaño-Muñoz, 2017). The OECD defines local information as digital or print materials generated by professional or non-professional mechanisms deemed relevant to local communities.…”