Tool For Community Building Research Articles

THE ROLE OF DIGITAL CROWDFUNDING PLATFORMS IN DEMOCRATIZING GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Digital platforms for crowdfunding have emerged as a breakthrough in the field of entrepreneurial finance, offering a digital channel for democratizing capital access on a worldwide level. This study demonstrates how crowdfunding platforms assist impending firms in managing worldwide finances’ intricacies while surpassing institutional and cultural obstacles through practical occurrences. This paper closely examines the social impact of these platforms as well as legislative frameworks, cultural norms, key performance indicators, and platform features. An important factor determining whether or not a crowdfunding site succeeds is its design and characteristics. The study points out that some platform features like reward tiers, equity options, and community-building tools can have an impact on investor involvement and the outcome of campaigns. Furthermore, the research showcases that crowdfunding is increasingly being used as a technique to enhance diversity and inclusion, especially among unrepre-sented business owners including females and ethnic minorities. The study finds optimal practices and typical problems in obtaining foreign finance by examining the success rates of businesses and how these platforms assist disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The results are intended to contribute to a more inclusive entrepreneurial environment by exposing tactics that business owners can use to optimize the potential of crowdfunding in various geographic areas. In essence, this paper intends to give practical information that can be used by politicians, private-public partners, and other stakeholders in business to promote an entrepreneurship environment that is fairer and more sustainable.

Addendum: Impolite Communication Practices as a Community-Building Tool in Sports News Comments

The Editorial Office of SibScript would like to report about the addition of information in the published article: Shulginov V. A., Alyansky K. A. Impolite Communication Practices as a Community-Building Tool in Sports News Comments. SibScript, 2023, 25(4): 481–490. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.21603/ sibscript-2023-25-4-481-490 The affiliation of the author Valery A. Shulginov supplemented with information about the second organization: Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, Russia, Moscow. The manuscript will be updated and the original will remain available on the article webpage.

Transformative Curriculum Design through Open Educational Resource Creation

At their best, open educational resources (OER) are known to foster equity, accessibility, and flexibility for users and include multiple perspectives from a collaborative community for creators and contributors (Hylén, 2006). Therefore, when planning our university’s first offering of a week-long course (re)design workshop (based on Saroyan & Amundsen, 2004), recognizing we had been primarily using materials from other post-secondary institutions, we opted to create resources specific to our university through a one-day facilitated writing sprint. Moving beyond offering information simply for course design, we decided to create an OER that encompasses three main areas of curriculum planning and design: composition, mapping, and alignment of learning outcomes; choice and alignment of instructional strategies and learning activities; and alignment of outcomes assessment at all levels. During the OER content development stage, the group also recognized the opportunity to position the OER, named CRICKET, as a community building tool, focusing on learning re-design. The site not only hosts curriculum planning and design information, it also features an OER authoring tool that invites participants to share their work with their peers. Through our OER creation process, we determined that OER have the potential to transform not only how information is disseminated and used, but also how it is created.

Impolite Communication Practices as a Community-Building Tool in Sports News Comments

Conflict discourse studies provide a valuable insight into linguistic and sociocultural ideologies of online communities. They also may offer effective approaches to linguistic detoxification. This research featured online communication of sport fans. Their discourse is interdiscursive, possesses a certain netiquette, and reflects the social and ideological diversity within the community. The authors explored common speech strategies aimed at threatening the social identity of outsiders or at the acquisition of power. The material involved an array of comments posted on Sports.ru: each example was tested for speech aggression, and the conflict-marked comments were described from the strategy perspective. The sampling relied on the general intention and expressive vocabulary aimed at the addressee. The frequency distribution of impoliteness strategies revealed that users often tended to assert power through personal characterization of their opponents, e.g., agism, sarcasm, hypercorrect speech behavior, identity attacks via derogatory team nominations, etc. The analysis identified various conflict strategies employed to form derogatory nominations, as well as defined the socio-cultural characteristics that marked the addressee as a target of conflictladen speech behavior.

2 Materializing Memory and Building Community: Contemporary Landscape Archaeology of a Nineteenth‐Century Bahamian Plantation

ABSTRACTThe Millars Plantation on Eleuthera, Bahamas was first established in 1803 as a cotton plantation and remained in operation through the 1830s. After emancipation, the formerly enslaved community continued to live on and work the plantation acreage and surrounding areas, until 1871 when Ann Millar formally left the 2000 acre‐property to the descendants of her former slaves and servants. That descendant community still upholds their right to this land today, despite a series of legal challenges by Bahamian and foreign investors who seek to develop new tourism‐based economies in the area. In the process of documenting the historical landscape of the Millars Plantation through oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and landscape survey, the research revealed ways that residents today have materialized memory—piecing together object, story, and space—on a living landscape that has too often been framed as empty or relegated to the past. This chapter investigates the ways in which memory becomes rooted in the materiality of the South Eleuthera landscape. When read side‐by‐side, the archaeological and contemporary social stratigraphy of South Eleuthera illustrate this historical landscape's ongoing site formation and the ways in which community members use the memoryscape as a tool for community building and local advocacy.

An evaluation of training using singing as a tool for community building in changing societies.

This article investigates lived experiences of participation in a training programme entitled 'Singing as a Tool for Community Building in Changing Societies', facilitated by Musicians Without Borders (MWB) and coordinated in partnership with the Health Research Institute PART-IM (Participatory and Arts-Based Methods for Involving Migrants in Health Research) research cluster at the University of Limerick. The aim of this qualitative study is to enhance understanding of participant experience regarding programme delivery, skill acquisition and community building. The research methodology uses an ethnographic framework. Data collection approaches included participant observation, author fieldnotes, individual semi-structured interviews, and an anonymous, post-training, feedback questionnaire. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in three key themes: the importance of expert facilitation; culturally aware contextualizing and conceptualizing of singing; and professional, whole-person support. These themes were cross-referenced against the research categories of delivery, skill and community building. The findings propose the importance of experienced, expert facilitators, contextualized understandings of diverse artistic traditions delivered by a culturally diverse team, and attention to the whole-person needs of both facilitators and participants. This research enhances understanding of participant experiences of arts-based training programmes in singing and the potential application of this learning for using singing as an arts-based research (ABR) method in migrant health research.

ENTERPRISE MODELLING METHODOLOGY FOR SOCIO-CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN: CASE FROM CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION AND CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE

ENTERPRISE MODELLING METHODOLOGY FOR SOCIO-CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN: CASE FROM CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION AND CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE

Restorative Practices as a Tool to Affect Peer Influence on Academic Integrity and Misconduct

Integrity is often related to acting ethically based on intrinsic motivation, rather than external controls. The disconcerting spike in misconduct cases in the pandemic-related, uninvigilated, remote learning environments has made it clear how far away from promoting integrity and its fundamental values (ICAI, 2021) over mere rule compliance we really are. Further, research routinely finds peer influence to be one of the most important factors affecting academic misconduct. Restorative Practices (RP), when applied not only in response to misconduct, but also as an educational and proactive community building tool, have been shown to be an effective way of preventing misconduct by fostering a sense of trust and community. They have further been found to empower marginalized individuals and communities, pursue and demonstrate fairness, as well as foster empathy, compassion, and accountability. Moreover, RP provide a process that enables student engagement and thus an opportunity to engage in peer-to-peer interaction on the topic of academic integrity and misconduct. In our presentation, we will provide a brief introduction to the principles of RP, followed by a discussion of their application to academic integrity and misconduct at MacEwan University, with a particular focus on student engagement and peer to peer interaction.

Social Media News: A Comparative Analysis of the Journalistic Uses of Twitter

The article investigates media organizations’ strategies to adapt to the new media ecology in which Twitter is renewing traditional news-production routines. Two main strategies are identified: a traditional approach aimed at one-way news dissemination, and a journalistic model that recasts the relationship with the audience and uses Twitter as a community building tool. It has been assumed that media outlets’ endeavours to gain centrality in the information system are associated with their ability in using the appropriate communication tools of Twitter and the implementation of strategies based on interaction with users. Based on a comparative analysis of Twitter uses by newspapers in 31 countries, the study shows that the ability to manage the structural elements of the platform is widespread among media organizations. Concurrently, the relational strategy, i.e. the investment in community-building, although less widespread, is present in many countries and leads to an increase level of user involvement.

Social Network Sites as Community Building Tools in Educational Networking

This paper discusses the educational context of social network sites (SNSs) and the manner in which they are adopted as Europeanization tools to develop the main EU education priorities. The Erasmus + (E+) context, articulated on networks of education bodies, denotes a promising ground to investigate social and digital trends emerging within institutionalized education communities. The research approach counts on a sample of 518 organizations aligned to a set of standards regulated within the institutionalized networking frame of the E+ program. Due to the compliance requirements of E+ guidelines, this work proposes a theoretical juxtaposition of the Community of Inquiry framework and the E+ framework. Final results show an EU educational trend verging to informal affordances and non-formal education features.

Facebook for Engagement

This research presents a virtual exchange project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland with 26 participants who were intermediate German language students. During the project, the students used a closed Facebook group to post about given topics; the posts combined video, audio, and text that adhered to multimodal meaning-making theory. The theoretical framework was task-based language teaching underpinned by the notion of engagement, social media in language learning, and telecollaboration. Language learning was viewed through a socio-cultural lens. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect data including questionnaires, interviews, and FB-logs. The qualitative data was analysed by content analysis method. The results indicate that the students perceived FB as an applicable tool for community building and they enjoyed the variation it brought to the course. Collaboration, use of communication tools, authenticity, and teachers' support fostered student engagement.

Blockchain and society

In this text, the origin of blockchain technology is explained and put into the context of three waves of digitalization: digitalization of information represented by the internet, digitalization of communities and community building tools represented by social media and digitalization of value represented by blockchain. The text will show that blockchain can bring back promised features of digitalization of the first two waves, features that were lost with centralization tendencies created by business models that are independent of the underlying technology. After a short introduction to the terminology, a map of the potential blockchain has for society is sketched. The text also debates the decentralization aspects of the technology and the challenges it poses for individuals and organizations. Later, the storytelling aspects, as well as some religious aspects within and around the blockchain community are analyzed. Finally, some thoughts about adoption scenarios are laid out, and some ideas why blockchains have become very important in Switzerland are formulated. The focus of this text is on the opportunities and strengths of the technology. It deliberately oversimplifies the technological aspects in order to focus on the implication of the technology on society.

The Improvement of Self-assessment and Unsureness of Career Choice with Adolescentswith Adolescents

The global definition of social work is activating people and systems, providing an answer to the challenges of life, and giving a route towards a better one1. This is achieved by tools and methods, which can be used during group counseling, making the goal of a better, different life one step closer. This study which is also used to provide guidance, introduces ways to help in self-assessment and career choices. „Mural painting” is a method of Nicaraguan origin, mainly used as a communitybuilding tool, the use of which began years ago in Transylvania. In 2019 we tried this method with adolescents in their sophomore, with the goal of getting rid of their doubts, and clearing their head for the future. Keywords: counseling, Mural painting, career choices, self-assessment, adolescents

Architecture as a Tool for Community Building in Two Different Islamic Cultures: Case of Masjid Pathok Negoro and Külliye

Masjid pathok negoro is a particular type of mosque found in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; while kulliye is a type of Islamic building complex established in the Ottoman Period of Bursa in Anatolia (modern Turkey). Both of them are neighbourhood-scaled architectures which were built not only for religious purpose but also to develop the social environment around them. This paper aims to compare and to analyse the similarities as well as the differences between masjid pathok negoros in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the kulliyes in Bursa, Turkey. Both can be considered as architectures which act as tools for community building in each of their cultures. The main difference is that the kulliyes were used for the creation of new settlements in Ottoman Period of Bursa, while masjid pathok negoros were used for the enhancement of the already-established settlements in the Sultanate of Yogyakarta. Keywords: masjid pathok negoro; kulliye; Yogyakarta; Bursa; community building

Slang młodzieżowy jako element budowania wspólnoty w komunikacji szkolnej

Youth slang as a sociolect serves to integrate and distinguish a particular group and to identify its members. As a rule, it is used as a community-building tool by those who aspire or actually belong to a group. In the article, the author attempts to answer the following questions: Who uses youth slang and in what communicative situations it is used at school? What is the context for using slang expressions? In what functions are they used? How are they received? Answers to these detailed questions will provide the basis for answering the main one: What is the significance of youth slang used in school communication for building a community? On the basis of studies carried out among school students, it may be concluded that the correct use of youth slang is closely related to the communicative situation. Deliberate and relevant use of the sociolect may become one of the elements of building a social community at school.

Community Archives as Community Building Tools

This paper explores the concept of community archives as community building tools. Through a systematic review of literature, we have found consistent themes in how communities participate in community archives and the effects archives have on the formation of community identity. We discuss the ways in which physical archival spaces, events in the community, and digital archives work to create representation and engage communities that have historically been left out of the archives as well as how community archival practices differ from mainstream archives. These differences sometimes cause conflicts between community archives and more traditional archival institutions which we also acknowledge in this review. In these ways we present the unique role community archives play in not only their communities, but also the wider archival profession.

Contributions of Local Farming to Urban Sustainability in the Northeast United States

Food consumption is an important contributor to a city's environmental impacts (carbon emissions, land occupation, water use, etc.) Urban farming (UF) has been advocated as a means to increase urban sustainability by reducing food-related transport and tapping into local resources. Taking Boston as an illustrative Northeast U.S. city, we developed a novel method to estimate sub-urban, food-borne carbon and land footprints using multiregion-input-output modeling and nutritional surveys. Computer simulations utilizing primary data explored UF's ability to reduce these footprints using select farming technologies, building on previous city-scale UF assessments which have hitherto been dependent on proxy data for UF. We found that UF generated meagre food-related carbon footprint reductions (1.1-2.9% of baseline 2211 kg CO2 equivalents/capita/annum) and land occupation increases (<1% of baseline 9000 m2 land occupation/capita/annum) under optimal production scenarios, informing future evidence-based urban design and policy crafting in the region. Notwithstanding UF's marginal environmental gains, UF could help Boston meet national nutritional guidelines for vegetable intake, generate an estimated $160 million U.S. in revenue to growers and act as a pedagogical and community building tool, though these benefits would hinge on large-scale UF proliferation, likely undergirded by environmental remediation of marginal lands in the city.

Social Health Content and Activity on Facebook

Facebook (FB) is a popular communication medium and community building tool for health outreach, promotion, and support groups for patients with chronic and rare conditions. Medical writers and health communication specialists are often tasked to write the content and support community interactions in health-related FB interventions. However, studies have reported mixed results at sustaining patient participation and engagement in FB interventions. Questions remain about the relationship between health behavior and FB usage and best strategies for evaluating health-related FB interventions. Furthermore, few studies examine health-related FB usage of people not designated as patients, which might help identify native activities that can sustain participants’ interest in and engagement with FB interventions. This study examines offline and online health-related activities of FB to identify characteristics shared by people who use FB for health-related purposes. The data from 455 users indicate that offline social health activities do not transfer online; privacy issues, interaction preferences, and differences between FB and offline networks may be barriers. FB campaigns and interventions should have modest and focused goals, such as supplementing offline activities and increasing preexisting FB activity. Designing FB interventions for networks and social groups with preexisting emotional ties and trust would be ideal.

The Farm Wife Mystery School: Women's use of social media in the contemporary North American urban homestead movement

Within the larger North American food security movement, self-professed ‘urban homesteaders’ have been tearing up their backyard lawns to plant vegetable gardens and install chicken coops in search of greater self-sufficiency and independence from industrial agriculture and the corporate food chain. Participants are most often white, middle-class professionals who have no previous experience in food production or preservation and they turn to the internet and social media for support and instruction. This article considers the online community created by the urban homesteading movement as a so-called community of practice, an educational space where adult learners never meet face-to-face, but where significant informal, self-directed learning is taking place. Women's urban homesteading blogs are examined in the context of social movement learning to determine whether the use of social media as an educational and community-building tool is aiding women in furthering their food security goals. Women's gender roles in this contemporary movement are also considered, and this analysis suggests that using social media may be helping to bridge the traditional isolation expressed by previous generations of women, to reinforce a sense of political purpose to home-based food production, and to potentially create an income source for the family.

A novel digital information service for federating distributed digital entities

We investigate the performance and the scalability metrics of a Digital Information Service framework that is used for unifying and federating online digital entities by retrieving and managing information located on the web. The Digital Information Service consists of tools and web services for supporting Cyberinfrastructure based scientific research. This system supports a number of existing online Web 2.0 research tools (social bookmarking, academic search, scientific databases, journal and conference content management systems) and aims to develop added-value community building tools that leverage the management and federation of digital entities and their metadata obtained from multiple services. We introduce a prototype implementation and present its evaluation. As the results indicate, the proposed system achieves federation and unification of digital entities coming from different sources with negligible processing overheads.