Increasing Stakeholders' Participation in Distributed, Emergent Knowledge Networks

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How can scientists create and share scientific knowledge in a way that simultaneously takes advantage of new technologies and information systems and recognizes the increasingly diverse, global nature of knowledge production? The problem of how to work with differing ways of knowing, with differing ontologies, is a central question to business, the natural and social sciences, and designers and users of information technology. This issue is particularly relevant for any institution that holds the task of assembling, collecting, representing, and displaying information and objects that may have different meanings for communities and professions. For these "information institutions" maintaining the coherence of a data set while still being ontologically diverse has become a key tension. Rather than trying to mitigate this tension, this project explores how digital media systems can put this tension to productive and creative use. The principle investigators evaluate the hypothesis that information systems can be created to support distributed knowledges and multiple ontologies, and that these systems can serve the multiple communities as well as contribute to the creation and sharing of emergent scientific knowledge. This research involves the design, creation, and evaluation of a set of networked sites that share digital objects among three expert communities: a group of archaeologists, the Zuni indigenous community of New Mexico, and a set of curators from the five partner organizations. Through the research team's analyses of the objects, how they are described in different ways, and interviews/focus groups with each of the three communities, they will uncover means by which systems can work with multiple knowledge-based traditions rather than sweep away these differences by classifying them into singular standards. This research will have broad impact by creating and evaluating new models for broadening participation in science. The project focuses on how to produce and share knowledge in behavioral sciences such as anthropology and archaeology, but it provides a model of stakeholder participation for other disciplines as well.