The evolving braid: how an organization in Uganda achieved reliable communications
The evolving braid: how an organization in Uganda achieved reliable communications
复制标题
不断发展的辫子：乌干达的一个组织如何实现可靠的通信
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
E. Brewer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Melissa Densmore;B. Bellows;J. Chuang;E. Brewer
在从事利用信通技术促进发展的研究时，往往比较简单的做法是将工作重点放在单一的具体技术上，无论是用于电信中心的计算机、用于数据收集的移动的电话，还是用于公共卫生教育的短信。然而，在实践中，人们和组织一起使用各种技术，在他们的生活中平稳地交织在一起。在本文中，我们分析的方式，在乌干达的卫生融资组织集成了各种通信技术在一起，以实现可靠的通信与他们的合作伙伴分布在乌干达西南部的卫生设施。基于四年的参与者观察，我们描述了两个通信场景在这个组织中说明编织通信工作。我们发现，利益相关者共同努力，发展和维护有效的关系，使用许多不同的沟通渠道并行在一起，一个组合的渠道，我们描述为编织通信。编织通信有三个主要特征。首先，他们使用共存的渠道，利用每一个最适合一套给定的目标。第二，它们是相互依赖或相互加强的，个别渠道的优势加强了其他渠道的弱点。最后，它们是共同发展的;随着可用技术和使用它们的方式的变化，编织使用的性质也会发生变化。
When engaged in ICTD research, it is often simpler to focus efforts on a single specific technology, whether that entails computers for telecenters, mobile phones for data collection, or text messages for public health education. In practice, however, people and organizations use a variety of technologies together, smoothly interweaving them as they navigate their lives. In this paper we analyze the ways in which a health financing organization in Uganda integrates a variety of communications technologies together to achieve reliable communications with their partnering health facilities distributed throughout Southwest Uganda. Based on four years of participant observation, we describe two communication scenarios in this organization to illustrate braided communications at work. We find that stakeholders work together to develop and maintain effective relationships using many different communications channels together in parallel, a combined channel we describe as braided communications. Braided communications have three primary characteristics. Firstly, they use co-existing channels, employing each as best suits a given set of goals. Secondly, they are co-dependent, or co-reinforcing, with strengths of individual channels reinforcing weaknesses of other channels. Finally, they are co-evolving; as available technologies and the ways in which they are used change, the nature of the braided use changes as well.