HCI, communities and politics

Working with communities around social change presents a challenge to common HCI methods, as politics often comes to the fore. In some cases, the politics of a community are explicit, for example, when working with activists or advocacy groups. In other cases, political aspects are less explicit but surface in considering the allocation of resources or in groups wherein issues of race, gender or class are of major importance. To address these dynamics, HCI researchers have to go beyond traditional HCI tools and metrics, which too often bracket out the political in an effort to focus on the instrumental issues and uses of technology. This panel juxtaposes several community-based HCI research projects in which politics have been a significant factor and asks “How do we address the politics inherent in community-based HCI research?”