Some thoughts on Research as an Element in Telecentre/Community Informatics Practice

Research funding which only focuses on and provides support to the academic element of the research in such a fragile and volatile area such as telecentres/community informatics runs the very real risk of ensuring the survival of the research while allowing what is being researched to decline and even expire. Community Informatics research if properly conducted and appropriately linked as a constitutive element of the community informatics practice can be a very considerable on-going support to the practice itself. Research (and researchers) which are not so embedded run the very real risk either of irrelevancy, of inappropriate distancing and detachment, or even of competing for those scarce resources required for network survival.