Web Site Development by Locally Oriented Community Organizations Duncan Sanderson, Andrée Fortin...
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Transcript of Web Site Development by Locally Oriented Community Organizations Duncan Sanderson, Andrée Fortin...
Web Site Development by Locally Oriented Community Organizations
Duncan Sanderson,
Andrée Fortin Université Laval, Quebec City
Outline
Context of the research
Some statistics: creation of web sites
Qualitative observations
Conclusions and recommendations
Context of the ResearchStudying the web sites and their creation by geographically oriented community orgs
The appropriation of geographical space continues into cyberspaceWeb sites may be a useful information resource, but it dependsWe need to know more about the context of web site development in comm orgsAre their difficulties and concerns similar to those of virtual communities?A site for a local comm org may become the seed for a wider virtual community
Some statistics
Statistics (cont.)
Study by Communautique: 3000 comm orgs surveyed, 458 responses
24% had a web site
Our study in Trois-Rivières: found 146 sites in a city with 300+ organizations
Difficulties (Communautique)
Many orgs have older computers
Limited financial, human ressources
Need for training in site creation
Concerns: quality and overabundance of information may not reach clientele with Internet (fax)
* These attitudes may slow site creation
Observations from our interviews
Interviews with leaders in community organizations in 3 municipalities
1) small town (1000 population)
Observations (St. Roch)
The web site a sub-project of a CAC
The federal grant was a major stimulus
Interesting inter-generational dynamic
Developers wanted to highlight local attractions (local pride important dynamic)
Observations (Victoriaville)
2) Victoriaville: 4 major sites
Desire to ‘not miss the boat’Both internal and external developmentAt the ‘Corpo’, callers were referred to siteSites only French: ressources lacking or anticipate local or regional audience?Evolution and refinement of sites
- Lack of use of ‘democracy’ features
Observations (Trois-Rivières)
Observations: Trois-Rivières
3) Medium-sized city (50,000+, regional centre, university)
Need for ressources to update site
Some orgs provided on-the-job training
Learning to avoid ‘high-end’ sites
- increased awareness of similar organizations
- an org moving towards a virtual community
- Learning how to use the Web
ConclusionGeographical organizations are major providers of Web content, but only a minority of them on the web
Many factors help to explain this
Local community orgs likely to be influential in the development of geog CNs (pos or neg)
Geographic communities are not using the web to support democracy (administrations and community organizations only providing information about themselves)
ConclusionStrategies to support the development of web sites
Grant programmesA need for a central signpost to sitesTraining in web site developmentAn organization could be mandated to develop sites (or to provide links) but allow customization and easy updatesInvestigate and address attitudes: a forum to discuss concerns of comm orgs (ex. communication with clientele, implications for work)