Web Site Development by Locally Oriented Community Organizations

Duncan Sanderson,

Andrée Fortin Université Laval, Quebec City

Outline

Context of the research

Some statistics: creation of web sites

Qualitative observations

Conclusions and recommendations

Context of the ResearchStudying the web sites and their creation by geographically oriented community orgs

The appropriation of geographical space continues into cyberspaceWeb sites may be a useful information resource, but it dependsWe need to know more about the context of web site development in comm orgsAre their difficulties and concerns similar to those of virtual communities?A site for a local comm org may become the seed for a wider virtual community

Some statistics

Statistics (cont.)

Study by Communautique: 3000 comm orgs surveyed, 458 responses

24% had a web site

Our study in Trois-Rivières: found 146 sites in a city with 300+ organizations

Difficulties (Communautique)

Many orgs have older computers

Limited financial, human ressources

Need for training in site creation

Concerns: quality and overabundance of information may not reach clientele with Internet (fax)

* These attitudes may slow site creation

Observations from our interviews

Interviews with leaders in community organizations in 3 municipalities

1) small town (1000 population)

Observations (St. Roch)

The web site a sub-project of a CAC

The federal grant was a major stimulus

Interesting inter-generational dynamic

Developers wanted to highlight local attractions (local pride important dynamic)

Observations (Victoriaville)

2) Victoriaville: 4 major sites

Desire to ‘not miss the boat’Both internal and external developmentAt the ‘Corpo’, callers were referred to siteSites only French: ressources lacking or anticipate local or regional audience?Evolution and refinement of sites

- Lack of use of ‘democracy’ features

Observations (Trois-Rivières)

Observations: Trois-Rivières

3) Medium-sized city (50,000+, regional centre, university)

Need for ressources to update site

Some orgs provided on-the-job training

Learning to avoid ‘high-end’ sites

- increased awareness of similar organizations

- an org moving towards a virtual community

- Learning how to use the Web

ConclusionGeographical organizations are major providers of Web content, but only a minority of them on the web

Many factors help to explain this

Local community orgs likely to be influential in the development of geog CNs (pos or neg)

Geographic communities are not using the web to support democracy (administrations and community organizations only providing information about themselves)

ConclusionStrategies to support the development of web sites

Grant programmesA need for a central signpost to sitesTraining in web site developmentAn organization could be mandated to develop sites (or to provide links) but allow customization and easy updatesInvestigate and address attitudes: a forum to discuss concerns of comm orgs (ex. communication with clientele, implications for work)