This work forms a part of a series of “on the ground” studies dealing with (post-)conflict situations, focusing on the iterative, participatory design of a tool, Cyberactivist, for protection for activists and the empirical research that led to it. Work on the development of privacy and security tools has not always recognized the fragile nature of the political processes in emerging democracies, frequent naivety about threat, nor the “occasioned” responses of activists because activism can be a “one time” endeavor, prompted by specific events. Researching political activism in Republika Srpska, we identified issues relating to the use of ICT and social media, leading to the redesign of our prototype which now raises awareness of privacy and security and supports activists by challenging ignorance, lowering exposure, and enabling remediation. We addressed “usable security” challenges to ensure simplicity of the tool and engaged with HCI researchers focused on international activism to assess the global applicability of the technical design.

In December 2010, a young market trader set himself on fire in protest in front of the governor’s palace in Tunisia. This event marked the beginning of mass protests, which within 6 weeks led to the resignation of the Tunisian government and to the departure of the president. Subsequently, protests against unpopular governments spread to neighbouring countries throughout northern Africa, and to additional countries in the Middle East. A number of governments were overthrown, and in Syria a civil war is still raging today. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Mena region have lost their homes and are now on the run, and most countries are now considered politically unstable. These political developments have been described under various labels, such as, the Arab Spring and the Arab Revolution . In the early days of this protest movement, these developments were framed in mainstream media as ‘Facebook’s Revolution’ or ‘Revolution 2.0’. Beneath these headings and framings is the assumption, or rather the thesis, that the rapid spread of the protests and the uprisings would not have been possible without the intensive use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. To put it bluntly, there was (and perhaps still is), the assumption that these social media made the Arab Spring and the revolution possible in the first place.

Abstract Within CSCW and HCI, an increasing body of literature has been demonstrating the essential relevance of infrastructures and infrastructuring to the work of people engaging in technologically mediated nomadicity. Tech Nomads – or T-Nomads, as they are sometimes called – not only rely ontechnological, human, andenvironmentalinfrastructural components – such as Wi-Fi, technical support, space, and basic resources such as light and power outlets – but they also have to engage in infrastructuring to mobilise their workplaces and effectively accomplish work in and across different locations. In this article, we bring an infrastructuring perspective to understanding nomadic practices concerning the organisation of complex collaborative events. We introduce findings from a long-term investigation focusing on how infrastructures are re-instantiated with the help of digital technologies, according to emerging demands from T-Nomads. Our findings demonstrate the need for a ‘non-essentialist’ approach to nomadicity, one which recognises the character of nomadic work and its varied aspects in different contexts. We extend the infrastructuring literature by demonstrating how infrastructuring work is done in a complex collaborative initiative, as the organisation of the annual European Social Forum.

Abstract This paper describes the appropriation processes involved in establishing a socio-technical enabling infrastructure in a valley in the High Atlas of Morocco. We focus on the challenges of co-establishing such an intervention in a rural/mountainous region that is already undergoing a process of continuous development and profound transformation. We reflect upon the changes and unforeseen appropriation by our local partners and inhabitants in the valley of a computer club primarily used as an informal learning centre for school children. We followed an ethnographic approach and combined research perspectives from both socio-informatics and anthropology. This paper sheds light on what a successful cooperation and intervention in this kind of challenging environment can look like. It does this by taking seriously competing expectations, fragile infrastructural foundations and the socio-cultural context. Despite the challenges, the intervention managed to lead to the establishment of a socio-technical enabling infrastructure that plays a particularly valuable role in local educational endeavours and that is now moving towards supporting other members of the community. The paper thus provides insights regarding what has to be considered to create a mutually beneficial cooperation with all relevant stakeholders as well as a sustainable intervention.

Abstract Issues of trust, privacy and security at the intersection of state intervention and the use of the internet both by ‘publics’ and by individuals for—from the State’s point of view- dispreferred purposes have been of great recent interest to researchers. This has been accompanied by a slowly developing concern for the way in which these issues pan out for people in non-Western cultures. Based on a study of Iranians living in urban centers, we examine the way in which culture, State institutions, technological infrastructure and practices intersect. Iran is a republic with a theocratic constitution and relatively strict regulation of private life. It has one of the highest rates of internet appropriation and social media use in the MENA region, but use is heavily mediated by state interventions, for instance the filtering of sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We show how young Iranians, due to restrictions on their private lives, learn from early age on to deal with illegal access techniques such as proxy servers and virtual private networks (VPNs). These access technologies are often used for private purposes such as contacting and meeting other genders. However, these capabilities become even more important when preparing to leave the country or to articulate their political dissatisfaction, specifically at moments of political unrest. We discuss and develop the concept of ‘counter-appropriation’ and the ‘counter-public’ to describe the practices of urban dwellers in circumventing increasingly more sophisticated intervention by the state security apparatus.

This article and the design fictions it presents are bound up with an ongoing qualitative-ethnographic study with Imazighen, the native people in remote Morocco. This group of people is marked by textual and digital illiteracy. We are in the process of developing multi-modal design fictions that can be used in workshops as a starting point for the co-development of further design fictions that envision the local population's desired digital futures. The design fictions take the form of storyboards, allowing for a non-textual engagement. The current content seeks to explore challenges, potentials, margins, and limitations for the future design of haptic and touch-sensitive technology as a means for interpersonal communication and information procurement. Design fictions provide a way of exposing the locals to possible digital futures so that they can actively engage with them and explore the bounds and confines of their literacy and the extent to which it matters.

Bosnia-Herzegovina and its administrative unit or "entity", Republika Srpska are divided, transitional post-war societies. The aim of this paper is to present a preliminary analysis of regional activists' use of information and communication technology (ICT) and to identify improvement potential. Empirical investigations of social media use and qualitative interviews with the country's activists indicate strong interest in ICT. Benefits for the use of ICT by activists include more efficient access to their target group, easier information sharing with the general population, and quicker reaction to spontaneous "offline" activities. Simultaneously, data points to problems such as limited budgets and know-how, intensive outsourcing practices, and a significant lack of awareness regarding data security. Activists see improvement potential in areas of training on content optimization, campaign management, ICT use and maintenance, security, and privacy. Additionally, there is potential to improve upon the sustainability of activist's work and patterns related to their ICT outsourcing.

Social media usage during the recent uprisings in Arab countries has gained increasing attention in human–computer interaction research. This study adds to these insights by providing some findings on the use of information and communications technology (ICT), specifically mobile media, by opposition forces and political activists during the Syrian civil war. The presented study is based on 17 interviews with Syrian FSA fighters, activists, and refugees. A first analysis showed evidence for some very specific use patterns during wartime (compared to media usage of political activists under less anomic conditions). The study also describes a fragmented telecom infrastructure in Syria: government-controlled regions offer fairly intact infrastructures while rebel-controlled regions have been cut off from telephone and Internet. Moreover, the central and very critical role of mobile video for documenting, mobilization, and propaganda is discussed.

Come_IN computer clubs are an established approach to support inter-cultural and inter-generational learning in German neighborhoods. We explore the adaptation of the come_IN concept to the Palestinian context as a means to bridge the social and economic divide that has plagued West Bank society for a period of more than six decades. Social exclusion, political conflicts and prolonged military occupation have kept the refugee camps in a perpetual state of marginalization. In this paper we report on our work in Al Amari-- a Palestinian refugee camp adjacent to the city of Ramallah. We examine how the computer club enables the emergence of social ties among residents of the camp and university students acting as tutors. Even though the ties are small-scale and informal, they have the potential to generate new and wider opportunities for exchange that may eventually support more social integration between the camp's marginalized population and the wider Palestinian population.

Alternative mobility modes for older adults are increasingly important for economic, ecological and social reasons. A promising option is ridesharing, defined as use of the same vehicle by two or more people traveling to a common destination. In particular, mobile computer supported ridesharing provides a promising way to enlarge older adults' mobility choices in addition to private driving and public transportation options. In order to understand the opportunities and obstacles of ridesharing from the point of view of elderly people, we conducted an interview study in order to examining ridesharing experiences. It turns out that "mobile independence" and "decisional autonomy" are key issues for mobile wellbeing. This partially conflicts with common ridesharing concepts. Hence, we further analyze older adults' strategies dealing with these conflicts and show that these strategies offer departure points for the design ridesharing solutions, which are better suited to the demands of older adults.

We analyze practices of political activists in a Palestinian village located in the West Bank. Activists organize weekly demonstrations against Israel's settlement policy and the separation wall. Over a period of 28 months, we conducted a field study consisting of eight days 'on the ground' observation and interviewing, and extensive monitoring of Internet communication. We describe the activists' background and their efforts to organize these demonstrations under conditions of military occupation. Over time, we observe the role both digital and material factors play in the organization of protest. Specifically, we analyze how Email and Facebook were appropriated to facilitate interaction 'on the ground'.

We present a study conducted in Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian town where the Arab Revolution, also known as 'Arab Spring', started, and where the role of Web 2.0 and social media applications in the people's uprising have been much discussed. We identify four relevant phenomena: (1) the publication of classified materials via WikiLeaks challenged the regime's legitimacy, (2) Web 2.0 connected local activists with Arab satellite TV, (3) social media linked the young activists with actors in other cities in Tunisia, (4) social media allowed organizing resistance inside Sidi Bouzid. Methodologically, we question a too deterministic view of the role of the new media and the representativeness of investigative techniques that uniquely use the new media in order to assess their impact. At the same time, rigorous investigations 'on the ground' are extremely difficult. We present a modest and initial attempt to provide such an 'on the ground' approach, cognizant of necessary limitations. We compare our findings with studies which analyze data downloaded out of social media applications and suggest that studies of the kind we describe offer additional insight and play an essential role in better understanding political uses of social media.

Information and communications technology (ICT) pervades most aspects of our lives and changes everyday's practices in work and leisure time. When designing innovative ICTs, we need to engage with given practices, institutional arrangements, and technological infrastructures. We describe the research framework used at the University of Siegen. It is based on a collection of design case studies in particular fields of practice and identifies cross-cutting issues to compare and aggregate insights between these cases. To illustrate this framework, we describe our research activities and discuss three themes which became important in different design case studies.

In this paper we portray a specific type of knowledge which we term 'nomadic knowledge'. It is required periodically by different actors and travels along foreseeable paths between groups or communities of actors. This type of knowledge lets us question generally held assumptions about the way knowledge is enacted. We illustrate our point with an ethnographical field study analyzing the European Social Forum (ESF), a network of political activist organizations. In this network different actors organize a periodic (biannual) event in which some 13,000 activists participated in 2008. We investigate how knowledge about organizing and managing the ESF is transferred between two events respectively, the actors and communities involved. Our study highlights the specific challenges in sharing nomadic knowledge and the consequences of deficiencies on the organizing process. The paper contributes to a better understanding of knowledge sharing practices and opens new directions for technical support.

The present paper presents a longitudinal study of the course ‘High-tech Entrepreneurship and New Media’. The course design is based on socio-cultural theories of learning and considers the role of social capital in entrepreneurial networks. By integrating student teams into the communities of practice of local start-ups, we offer learning opportunities to students, companies and academia. The student teams are connected to each other and to their supervisors in academia and practice through a community-system. Moreover, the course is accompanied by a series of lectures and group discussions. In this paper we want to present our experiences and to reflect upon the design changes between the first and the second instance of the course. The evaluation of the course showed that the work on real-world problems and the collaboration in teams together with partners from start-up companies were evaluated as very positive, although design flaws, and cultural and professional diversities limited the success of the first instance in 2001. For the second course in 2002, the didactical design was improved significantly according to evaluation results, which brought evidence that the design changes resulted in better collaborative practices and more stable relationships between start-up companies and students. Furthermore, it was found that especially the differences in cultural background and different historical experiences between the two distinct groups of ‘students’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ might make processes of social identification more difficult and, therefore, successful community-building less likely’.

This paper examines WiInf-Central, the "virtual homeplace " of a student community at the University of Hamburg, focusing on the processes of social identity and community building. After a detailed description of WiInf-Central we review our theoretical approaches based on social-identity theory and communities of practice, then setting out our research questions and design. Subsequently we present and discuss our results, followed by some remarks on the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

We present experiences made with a course in applied computer science which was based on the concept of communities of practice. Within the scope of the course "entrepreneurship and new media" we offered a project lab which was accompanied by a set of lectures given by internal and external lecturers. In the project groups, the students worked in close cooperation with start-up companies. The students were connected through a community system to each other and to their supervisors in academia and practice. As the communities of practice emerged we discuss the role they may play in teaching.

Certain functions in groupware affect more than one user who might have conflicting interests. To describe conflicts arising from the use of groupware functions, we distinguish the roles of the activator and the user affected. As technical means to lessen these conflicts, we develop two metafunctions: visibility of use and negotiability. We expect that these metafunctions reduce role-based conflicts and lead to higher acceptance of groupwaresystems among users. To examine these hypotheses we performed an empirical study in six different organizations. Using scenarios to present different design options to users, we confirmed most of our assumptions. Implications of these findings for the design of groupware are discussed.