New Communities, Emerging Content report

Connecting communities through information technology

Friday, 08 January 2010 09:29

Vicnet recently published New Communities, Emerging Content, a new research report available for download on the Publications page. The research project was funded by the auDA Foundation. It explored the ways in which the internet can be used to assist new and emerging communities with language and cultural maintenance. Data was gathered through an extensive literature survey and consultations with the S'gaw Karen, Dinka and Harari communities in the Wyndham region of Victoria as well as drawing on previous Vicnet work.

Some of the key themes outlined in the report include the need to empower communities to be able to:

  • develop websites and content to met expressed information, cultural, learning and communication needs;
  • benefit from existing free or inexpensive resources to meet those needs;
  • access appropriate fonts, keyboards and localised web infrastructures;
  • use both oral and written forms of their language to accommodate diverse information seeking needs;
  • access solutions that are contemporary, relevant and prestigious.

Initial feedback has been pleasing. Professor Michael Clyne, head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, recently commented that it is an "excellent report on digital inclusion for new community languages."