Alternative Social Media for Outreach and Engagement: Considering Technology Stewardship as a Pathway to Adoption

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Gow, Gordon A.

• Commercial social media (CSM) play a vital role in support of community outreach and engagement. Despite the apparent benefits of CSM, its widespread use raises important concerns about privacy and surveillance, limits on innovation, and data residency for the organizations that increasingly rely on them. This chapter will consider these concerns in relation to an international research collaboration involving technology stewardship training. Technology stewardship is an approach adapted from the communities of practice literature intended to promote effective use of digital ICTs for engagement. The program currently focuses on using commercial social media platforms for introductory capacity building, but this chapter will suggest important reasons to assist them in exploring non-commercial alternative social media (ASM) platforms. The chapter describes how the technology stewardship model offers a pathway for communities of practice interested in adopting ASM for outreach and engagement.

• Date created

  2020-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • communities of practice
  • social media
  • leadership
  • information and communication technology
  • technology stewardship
  • community engagement
  • alternative media
  • ICT4D
  • innovation
  • community informatics

• Type of Item

  Chapter

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-xy8j-w962

• License

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