Community Building Research Articles

Creating Community-Based Tourism Resilience

This paper explores the collaborative social development achieved between a university in Malang, an industrial paint manufacturer, and the slum community of Jodipan, situated alongside the Brantas River. This marginalised community has overcome significant challenges through applied service-learning projects, transforming it into a vibrant hub and major tourist attraction. These efforts highlight the profound impact of service learning on community development and building commercial resilience. Jodipan offers valuable lessons on grassroots developmental initiatives. Once a slum, it now plays a critical role in the local tourism economy, provisioning new commercial opportunities in the form of hospitality venues, homestays and the retailing of specialist handicrafts. This initiative underscores the importance of partnerships and social initiatives in creating meaningful impacts on disadvantaged communities. This study identifies service-learning as a crucial catalyst in Jodipan's revitalisation as a tourism attraction, drawing on existing literature to analyse its role in the community's transformation. The unique collaborative context of Jodipan's resilience-building efforts amidst poverty and environmental degradation is examined. By foregrounding Jodipan's remarkable experiences, this study demonstrates how service-learning can drive economic empowerment. The ultimate lesson is that community resilience and well-being involve the ability to withstand initial developmental shocks and adapt to new circumstances.

Toponymy of The Names of Neighborhoods in Teluk Segara District, Bengkulu City, Bengkulu Province

The aim of this research is to discuss the lexical and cultural meaning of naming villages in Teluk Segara District, Bengkulu City, Bengkulu Province, which includes 5 of the 13 existing Villages. This research categorizes them based on naming system aspects, (1) embodiment aspects, (2) social aspects, (3) cultural aspects. This research uses descriptive qualitative research. The data source was obtained from the Traditional Chair of Pondok Besi Subdistrict and the Traditional Chair of Berkas Subdistrict. The data obtained was in the form of interview data in Teluk Segara District. The results of this research reveal that the toponymy of the names of sub-districts in Teluk Segara District, Bengkulu City consists of various categories, including water elements, community social interactions, flora, tangible elements, folklore, nature, settlement patterns, activities, landforms, and building.

“Knowledge Strategies” for Indigenous Studies on Intercultural Communication in Non-Western Countries in the Global Power Structure

According to Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge theory, knowledge is not produced in a vacuum; the construction of any knowledge system implicitly contains power relations. The “knowledge strategies” for Indigenous studies on intercultural communication should evolve and improve in response to shifts in the global power structure. With the development of globalization and the evolution of communication technologies, this study interprets the current global power structure as a “dual structure” in which the international society and the world society coexist and develop together. This structure leads to a complex trend of simultaneous “centralization” and “decentralization”, as well as “homogenization” and “hybridization” in the global cultural order. For scholars from non-Western countries, Indigenous studies on intercultural communication need to interpret the new global power structure, expanding their research perspectives and topics to a global dimension. This approach links Indigenous conceptual resources and methodologies with an open and diverse global cultural order. This study proposes “knowledge strategies” for Indigenous studies on intercultural communication in non-Western countries and introduces a third level of significance for intercultural communication beyond daily interaction and cultural interaction: community building. Regarding the research purpose, this study aims to provide a new perspective for the study of intercultural communication theory, promoting an equal dialogue between Western and non-Western knowledge systems of intercultural communication, and enhancing the inclusiveness and humanistic awareness of this discipline.

Shouldering the Double Burden of Homophobia and Racism Alone: Challenges to Seeking Social Support and Finding Community Among Sexual Minorities of Color

ABSTRACT Social support is important to well-being, and people with more supportive social networks tend to be healthier. Sexual minorities are generally at risk of worse health outcomes, and as “double minorities,” sexual minorities of color are vulnerable to experiences of both homophobia and racism. Yet, we know little about how they navigate their social relationships or how efficacious these relationships are. This study draws from 25 in-depth interviews of Black and Latino/a sexual minority adults, finding that respondents experience conditional social support from their networks. Familial ties are ill-equipped to provide support related to their sexual identity but more equipped to provide support related to racism. Inversely, ties to the LGBTQ community provide support related to sexual identity but impose challenges related to racial identity. Our analysis makes two novel contributions regarding social belonging among sexual minorities of color: First, strong ties and shared identity are not inherently predictive of the accessibility or quality of social support. Second, social integration and isolation are not mutually exclusive but can be experienced simultaneously. Given that social support and community ties can be health protective, this study provides insight into effective community building that meets the comprehensive needs of sexual minorities of color.

Focus groups as counterspaces for Black girls and Black women: A critical approach to research methods

When researchers intentionally account for the complexities of gendered racism, focus groups can become spaces for healing, community building, information exchange, psychological safety, and support for Black girls and Black women. This approach, when situated within race, gender critical perspectives, presents opportunities for ascertaining Black girls and Black women’s onto-epistemologies in ways that coincide with their identities. Given the alternative possibilities of focus groups, in this paper we advance strategies for employing focus groups as counterspaces, an anti-racist and anti-oppressive research method that educational psychologists can utilize to challenge current methodological approaches related to Black girls and Black women. To transform how educational psychologists spotlight Black girls and Black women as knowledge producers in research, we draw upon guiding theoretical frameworks (Black Girl Cartography and Critical Race Feminism) that highlight their voices and intersectional perspectives. We will (1) explain the theoretical perspectives that center this method as a critical approach for the gendered racialized experiences of Black girls and Black women, (2) share insights from the field where focus groups provide psychological safety and group collectivism, serve as an adaptive coping mechanism, and provide space for authentic communication styles, (3) consider areas for improvement and best practices for focus groups in research design, data collection and analysis, and (4) provide ethical considerations related to focus groups as counterspaces. Implications for critical research methodology approaches centering Black girls and Black women and the broader impact on the field of educational psychology are discussed.

Assessing the Reach and Engagement Effectiveness of Disseminating Food and Nutrition Information on Social Media Channels.

This study utilized Facebook and Instagram as communication channels for disseminating evidence-based food and nutrition information to low-income adults. From February 2021 to October 2022, 442 identical posts were shared across both platforms for audience reach and engagement. Posts were categorized in two ways: hedonic and three levels of utilitarian (informative, convenience, utility), based on widely applied social media uses and effects theory (Uses and Gratifications Perspective); and food/nutrition topics (dietary guidance, mealtime behaviors, recipes, food resource management, health behaviors, and community building). From predominantly image-based posts (82.6%), reach and engagement for Instagram (136,621 versus 6096, respectively) outperformed Facebook (83,275 versus 1276, respectively). Analysis of covariance of rank-order reach and engagement metrics (likes, replies, shares) showed Facebook engagement was consistent across hedonic and utilitarian categories while Instagram showed highest reach and engagement for utilitarian posts, especially those emphasizing food affordability. Facebook and Instagram differed in which food/nutrition topics achieved maximal reach and engagement. Fifteen posts were randomly selected for qualitative analysis to identify features reflecting engagement levels. Low-engagement posts featured low-color-contrast or less-appealing images, especially on Instagram. This study offers insights for practitioners and researchers aiming to use social media to promote healthy food and nutrition.

Are police as “guardian-oriented” as they should be? Expectation-reality discrepancies are related to perceptions of legitimacy

PurposeDue to instances of excessive use of force by police and in recognition of the importance of building positive police-community relationships, policymakers have urged police to become more guardian-oriented (i.e., prioritizing community safety and relationships) and less warrior-oriented (i.e., prioritizing physical control and fighting crime). The purpose of this study was to examine whether community members think police should be guardian- or warrior-oriented and how they view police in their community. MethodsYoung adult participants from Prolific Academic (N = 436) self-reported their perceptions of police in an online survey. ResultsParticipants preferred police to have more of a guardian than warrior orientation and thought police are not as guardian-oriented as they should be. Further, if police did not meet guardian expectations, participants had more negative perceptions of police legitimacy. ConclusionsExpectations for police behavior may influence police legitimation and, within the context of police reform, community members support the call for police to be more guardian-oriented by prioritizing community safety and building relationships. Fostering a guardian orientation in police is particularly important for police that are interested in promoting perceptions of legitimacy among the communities they serve.

Orientations in Queer Game Studies

This paper examines the paradigm of queer game studies. In order to do so, I employ Sara Ahmed’s (2006; 2007) queer phenomenology as a method, which I call a spatial discourse analysis, to trace orientations in the paradigm’s foundational texts from 2017-2018. I identify how queer gets meaning in relation to objects via proximity and distance, and present three orientations in queer game studies: representation, materiality, and fun. I argue that representation becomes constituting for queer game studies, in the effort to escape it; that tech-materiality perceived as video game specific gets articulated as carrying queerness; and finally, that fun is a central site of contention for queerness, both on a gameplay and community building level. I end the paper by bringing attention to the paradigm’s internal contradictions, so that scholars might mobilize them in their efforts to further queer research practices and methodologies.

Statecraft at the frontier of capitalism: A grounded view from China

The death of urban entrepreneurialism is proclaimed surprisingly by opposite conceptualisations of austerity urbanism and radical municipalism. This paper argues that rather than seeing them as contrasting types, post-pandemic statecraft reflects the increasing tension and entanglement between capitalistic and territorial logic. From the ground of Chinese urban governance, we illustrate how Chinese statecraft maintains state strategic and extra-economic intention through deploying and mobilising market and society – to create its own agents and to co-opt those that are already existent or emerging. This statecraft is illustrated through community building, urban development, and regional formation.

Low-Income Homeownership and Safety Nets: The Role of Radical Community Practices

ABSTRACT Nonprofit networks that oversee housing accessibility within urban neighbourhoods emerge as crucial arenas for inducing transformative shifts in policy and practice in the United States. However, civil society actors are subject to considerable critique in the discourse on radical planning theory. They are often alleged to be hand in glove with state and market actors in enabling displacement and dispossession of marginalised groups. This study challenges some of these entrenched positions and provides important counter-narratives on the transformative roles of civil society. Delving into the roles of various institutions that facilitate low-income homeownership, community building, and neighbourhood stabilisation, the study reveals that civil society actors present opportunities for subaltern expression, disruptive activism, and structural transformation in power relationalities. Their strategies respond to wealth-building pathways through housing and address intersectional challenges related to identity, citizenship, and access, thus reaffirming their transformative potential in the urban planning discourse.

Engaging Community Health Workers in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 Public Health Response to Address Health Disparities and Build Community Resilience.

In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) funded community health workers (CHWs) for COVID Response and Resilient Communities (CCR). CCR is a 3-year, $350 million initiative to implement CHW strategies aimed at reducing COVID-19 impacts, building resilience, and improving health equity by addressing health-related social needs. This paper describes the CCR initiative and experiences to date, underscoring CHWs' critical role in CDC's pandemic response. CCR funds 67 recipients to reach communities who are disproportionately affected by long-standing health disparities (hereafter, priority populations). CCR aims to decrease the impact of COVID-19 and increase community resilience to respond to COVID-19 and future public health emergencies. Recipients implement three strategies: train CHWs to support the COVID-19 response, increase the workforce of CHWs to manage the spread of the disease, and improve utilization of community and clinical resources to engage CHWs to help strengthen communities' resilience to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. We funded three additional organizations to provide technical assistance to CCR recipients and collaborate with us on a national evaluation of the program. CCR recipients hired about 950 CHWs and integrated these CHWs into over 1,000 organizations and care teams. At the end of the second program year, CHWs made over 250,000 referrals to social services and over 150,000 referrals to address specific health conditions. CCR demonstrates that CHWs can be quickly mobilized to participate in a public health emergency and reach those most affected by COVID-19.

Beyond content delivery: harnessing emotional intelligence for community building in fully online digital spaces

The onset of the pandemic catalyzed a paradigm shift in educational methodologies, bringing various forms, such as hybrid, distance, and fully online models, into focus. The following study explores the affective domain in online learning, focusing on how emotions, facial expressions, and body language influence engagement and support community building in fully online learning environments. This research explores the role of emotional intelligence in Fully Online Learning Communities (FOLC) and examines the impact of positive and negative emotions on interpersonal engagement and participation. Findings indicate positive emotions to be closely linked to increased engagement and active participation. The study also highlights the importance of exploring body language in digital learning environments and addresses challenges posed by technological barriers in fully online learning spaces. Emotional intelligence is pivotal in online learning and community building, emphasizing the need to understand how to create emotionally supportive digital learning environments. Outcomes indicate a need for future research to focus on understanding the role of cultural dimensions in supporting learner agency and community building in the fully online learning context.

Citizen Art: A Creative Mural Project for Community Building

Citizen Art: A Creative Mural Project for Community Building

Haptic poetics and community (re)building in Swinburne’s The Flogging Block

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Swinburne’s unpublished manuscript The Flogging Block and its 2011 transcription produced by Mark McDougal. Caricaturing the corporeal punishment at Eton, Swinburne’s poem integrates touch, sound, and sight in the text. However, the transcription seems to compromise this multimodality in a print medium. McDougal hopes that his inadequate rendering of Swinburne’s hands could be completed by future interested readers with higher technologies. My article is an interested response to this hope and reads McDougal’s adaptation as a haptic mediation of Swinburne’s multimodal poetics. Through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s disorientation theory, I argue that Swinburne’s poem disorients readers’ sensory experience of language, critiques his contemporary ideological repression of body, and rebuilds a community based on bodily connections. The first part of the article conducts a reversed reading that first examines McDougal’s haptic mediation of Swinburne’s manuscript and then explores Swinburne’s techniques of sensory disorientation. The second part relates this sensory disorientation to Swinburne’s republican project of building a community through appropriating pornographic techniques and through stressing the role of rhyme. Both McDougal’s adaptation and Swinburne’s manuscript endeavour to recover our lost intimacy with language, with one another, and with the world.

Building community college capacity to enhance student success and equity in dual enrollment

AbstractThis article uses Austin Community College (ACC) as a case study to illustrate how community colleges can build institutional capacity to provide dual enrollment. First, the manuscript synthesizes background literature on the growth of dual enrollment and implications for community colleges. Then, drawing on interviews from relevant stakeholders and institutional data, the authors describe how ACC reorganized internally to streamline dual enrollment structures and processes. In turn the college was able to strengthen partnerships with the school districts, manage growing enrollments, improve the student experience, and prioritize equity.

Does ostracism/rejection impact self-disclosures? Examining the appeal of perceived social affordances after social threat

Abstract Two studies examine how experiencing a social need threat (ostracism and rejection) impacts subsequent preferences for self-disclosure to various digital audiences. Findings consider how contextual/situational factors like need threats may impact the appeal of two established perceived social affordances of media: personalization and privacy/visibility. Participants took part in a (bogus) social media activity to elicit feelings of inclusion/ostracization/rejection and then were asked about sharing their media preferences with various potential audiences. Results show that social need threats have no significant impact on privacy preferences but do affect preferences for sharing with some audiences and not others. Notably, ostracized and rejected participants show different patterns of preferences, suggesting these forms of social need threat may have distinct impacts on future self-disclosures. Implications for online relationship development and community building are considered in the discussion.

Teaching Scientific Literature Analysis: A Systematic Adoption of Skill-Building Methods to Enrich Research Training for Undergraduate Students.

Teaching scientific literature analysis skills is a critical step in research training. Here I describe a 6-week skill-building module on understanding scientific literature, incorporated into a 10-week undergraduate honors research practice course in Neuroscience. Key pedagogical components include: 1) student-centered active-learning, skill-building and community-building activities; 2) persistent adoption of a proven CREATE method and a novel curate scientific summary (CSS) method for teaching scientific literature analysis skills; 3) collaborative class organization consisting of persistent learning pods (PLPs) to facilitate student-driven participation and peer learning; and, 4) role play of a real research lab. Skill development was assessed using a self-assessment survey (SAS) and longitudinal evaluation of the CREATE and CSS methods application by the PLPs to analyze primary research articles (PRAs) over four weeks. Outcomes demonstrate alleviation of pre-existing student anxiety to read complex scientific literature and advancement of critical-thinking and collaborative skills. Specifically, the SAS responses indicate that student perception about reading scientific literature transformed from being a daunting task to an enjoyable activity; this enhanced their confidence in evaluating scientific literature. PLPs fostered student engagement, peer instruction, and community building, and contributed to skill development. Weekly assessment of CREATE and CSS application highlighted marked improvements in students' abilities to analyze and critique complicated scientific material. Role playing a research lab setting with a focused research theme facilitated integrative understanding of a frontier topic in Neuroscience. The outlined innovative approach can be adopted in Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) and should help contribute to systematizing didactic practices to train neuroscientists.

A Bank for the People: The People’s Savings Bank and Community Building in Philadelphia, 1907–1917

ABSTRACT This article examines how Black Americans used Black economic nationalism to create community through the formation and support of The People’s Savings Bank in early twentieth-century Philadelphia. Through its lending practices, The People’s Savings Bank offered Black Philadelphians credit opportunities that allowed them to circumvent the Jim Crow practices of the period. Furthermore, the article argues that the success of the bank was the result of inter-gender mutualism by a community determined to achieve self-determination through economic empowerment. Banking in Black Philadelphia went beyond creating a successful moneyed class, it was about crafting an oasis for a people besieged by White supremacist structures.

Virtual Gathering Platforms in Academic Teaching: Potential and Applications

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a rapid shift towards online learning where educators and students had to quickly adapt to new digital formats. However, the core aspects of community building and social interaction that are essential to traditional classrooms became challenging to maintain. To address this issue, we were interested in testing Virtual Gathering Platforms (VGPs) Topia and WorkAdventure to see how effectively they could be adapted to various academic teaching and learning settings. These examples of Extended Realities (XR), adopted from the 2D metaverse, aim to improve communication and interactivity in a fun and engaging way, allowing users to create immersive worlds for socialising, and collaborating. Using Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), Technological Self-Efficacy (TSE) and distributed scaffolding frameworks as a guide, we created adaptable templates of both platforms that not only introduced users to how they work, but also included features flexible enough to suit various academic disciplines and promote social engagement and collaborative learning. We then implemented a case study and invited university educators teaching international courses to adapt the templates and assess them within their own learning settings. In addition, it was important for us to use the on-boarding sessions as a focal point. Here, we introduced the templates through multiple resources and offered one-to-one support to develop their use within chosen learning scenarios which ranged from an icebreaker activity to an online student resource centre. Observations then documented the adapted templates being used with students in these settings, and feedback regarding user perceptions of the platforms and the support strategies used was gathered. The study reveals the complex interplay between user experiences, support strategies, and educational frameworks, emphasising the need for adaptable and collaborative approaches to optimise these platforms in higher education.

Pulling together or pulling apart? Understanding the heterogenous collective action frames of local climate activists through a Q methodology study

ABSTRACT The potential for green community groups to respond effectively to climate change depends on the heterogeneity of preferences of individual member activists. Using a Q-methodology study of two groups in England, we propose an original typology of collective action frames for local green activism: ‘consensus seeking’, ‘community building’, ‘radical adversarial’, and ‘eco-egalitarian’. These differ according to how activists articulate and act upon the diagnosis of the problem, the solutions proposed, and the rationale for action. Both groups comprised members aligned to the four different frames, none of which was dominant. This presents organisers with the challenge of how to construct frames meaningful to such heterogeneous collectives. Ongoing (re)framing was observed in both groups, reflecting struggles between the four frames identified. We conclude by reflecting on how a heterogeneity of frames within community groups was managed through flexible organisational forms that facilitate multiple platforms and projects, enabling sub-groups to act autonomously.