Community Democracy Online: A Preliminary Report from East Palo Alto

Abstract

This paper reports on the first year of a research collaboration between Stanford University's Symbolic Systems Program and the East Palo Alto Community Network. We are exploring whether and how the Internet can enhance the participation of East Palo Alto residents in community decision making. We aim to apply knowledge of the political and social environment in East Palo Alto, as well as results from community network and electronic democracy projects elsewhere, to the development of an online environment for expanding community democracy. We report on our experiences and study of East Palo Alto, and their implications for future design and intervention using Internet tools.

Keywords: communities and technologies, digital divide, e-democracy