Introduction to Social and Digital Inclusions in Networks Minitrack

This minitrack features papers that study social and digital inclusions in networks at different levels. Specifically, it emphasizes research in four areas: (i) connections between off-line and on-line divides; (ii) inequalities within and among communities; (iii) information and communication technologies for development; and (iv) inequalities between users with respect to social and digital divides. This year's minitrack includes three papers from these topic areas. The paper entitled "Determining dimensions of social websites: Insights through Genre Theory" by Singh, Hackney, Dwivedi and Peszynski asks and answers many questions. This paper provides important insights into the purpose (why), content (what), format (how), participants (who), timing (when), and location (where) of digital media created and published in social networks. The authors use Genre Theory to present a comprehensive review of social networking sites, illustrating similarities and differences in user profiles, user-generated content, technological development, linguistic elements, and user networking requirements. The central question this paper explores is if the above dimensions of social media and implications of social networking are the same in all regions of the world and for all populations. By striving to understand to what extent social media is universal, this paper seeks to advance the use of social networking for communication, collaboration and community development. The paper entitled "Perceptions of connectedness: Public access computing and social inclusion in Colombia" by Baron and Gomez investigates the benefits of public access computers for individual users in underserved communities in Colombia, South America. This case study is particularly significant because of the history of violence and exclusion in this country. The authors find that the most important benefit of Internet access for this population is strengthening personal connections with friends and family. A more detailed look at the results in this paper reveals that for users of libraries, telecenters, and cybercafes, improving these personal relationships can, in turn, improve both community and sociopolitical development. Finally, this paper presents a challenging agenda for future work: Asking researchers to understand the role information and communication technologies in increasing empowerment, advancing social capital, and promoting development in its many forms. The last paper in this minitrack, "The missing link: Intention to produce online content accessible to people with disabilities by nonprofessionals," by Nahon, Benbasat and Grange provides a new and important theoretical framework to analyze obstacles, challenges, and incentives which lead non-professional developers to design websites and produce information that are accessible to people with disabilities. This paper shows that community context, attitude and self-efficacy are the most important predictors of intention to produce accessible content. The authors also found that internal prompts to action are important in determining attitude (i.e., intrinsic motivation and personal values). Finally, this paper proposes two new constructs that are useful in understanding obstacles to producing accessible content, namely context detachment and responsibility shifting. The papers in the 2012 social and digital inclusion minitrack are particularly interesting since they span the virtual and physical worlds; producers and consumers of digital media; users at home, work, and at public access computers, and include case studies from five different continents. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences