My current research projects include:

Citizenship, Standards, and the Government On-line initiative

Despite gains in bridging the digital divide in Canada over the past 10 years, there still remains a large gap in Internet access between lower income and higher income households. Public Internet access sites such as local libraries and community centers address the problem to a certain degree, but often cannot be relied upon by people with disabilities, less mobile seniors, and single parents. Given the benefits of household Internet access, this research project will investigate the long-term sustainability of this access for lower income people who currently have household Internet access as well as examine policy and legal options that address the right to communicate in an increasingly Internet-mediated society. http://arago.cprost.sfu.ca/citizen

First Nations Connectivity Research Project

The Province of BC is committed to bridging the digital divide for First Nations communities to provide access to e-Health, e-Learning, and e-Business opportunities. To accomplish this goal, the 2006 provincial budget included a commitment of $15 million over two years to work with federal partners to provide broadband, last-mile connections, computers and training for First Nations in BC. Providing broadband infrastructure is a high priority for First Nations organizations and several provincial and federal ministries. The School of Communication, at Simon Fraser University, has extensive technology research expertise and is ideally suited to design and conduct an evaluation of the impact of providing First Nations with high speed connectivity. This multi-year project will assist in providing a third-party evaluation of the First Nations Connectivity Project, baseline information on the impact of connectivity to first nations, and identify gaps and issues with connectivity. Please visit our research wiki for more information and to participate in the project.

Civic Engagement and Surveillant Environments (CEASE)

The CEASE project was a multi-year, SSHRC sponsored research project on the impacts of surveillance technology on public life in Canada, with a special focus on the environments for youth, including transit and schools. We have recently completed a study of surveillance use at high schools in the lower mainland of British Columbia. In 2005 we created an interactive digital map of surveillance in BC High Schools. Unfortunately, the mapping software, which was based on a Google Map Hack broke down in late 2005. We preserved the data in the form of screenshots, hardcopies, and spreadsheet entries, however.

Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN)

City-regions are now the key source of economic vitality and innovative capacity for nation-states; innovative activity is becoming more, not less, concentrated in city-regions. It is widely recognized that the comparative advantage of city-regions in the knowledge economy rests on their social characteristics as much as their economic assets. The critical issues to be addressed in the proposed strategic research cluster are:

• How do local social characteristics and processes in city-regions determine their economic vitality and dynamism as centres of innovation and creativity?
• How do the social learning dynamics between economic actors, the social dimensions of quality of place (including diversity, openness, and inclusion), and the social nature of civic engagement and governance processes shape the city-region’s economic growth, creativity, and innovative potential?

Because these questions span the economic and the social, as well as the local and the global, a multi-disciplinary perspective is required. Moreover, in a country as spatially diverse as Canada, a research design that is national in scope but attentive to local experiences is called for; the diverse, multi-perspective team approach in this strategic research cluster will achieve exactly this.

The web pages for this research are here

Media-rich urban shared experience (MUSE)

The MUSE project (http://www.mobilemuse.ca) is headquartered at New Media BC, in Vancouver. From their press clipping: "Mobile MUSE is exploring new technologies in combination with social demands, to discover ways wireless applications can create personalized, effective, interactive services. This extremely timely project is responding to meet the demands of the growing Mobile Urban Culture." As part of the MUSE project, I am conducting research on the user experience of mobile rich media.