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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Processes of Proliferation: Impact Beyond Scaling in Sharing and Collaborative Economies
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Airi Lampinen
  • Ann Light
  • Chiara Rossitto
  • Anton Fedosov
  • Chiara Bassetti
  • Aniko Bernat
  • Penny Travlou
  • Gabriela Avram
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Publisher ACM Digital library
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 2573-0142
Volume 6
Number GROUP
Page Range Article No.: 41
Date 2022
Abstract Text While scalability and growth are key concerns for mainstream, venture-backed digital platforms, local and location-oriented collaborative economies are diverse in their approaches to evolving and achieving social change. Their aims and tactics differ when it comes to broadening their activities across contexts, spreading their concept, or seeking to make a bigger impact by promoting co-operation. This paper draws on three pairs of European, community-centred initiatives which reveal alternative views on scale, growth, and impact. We argue thatproliferation -- a concept that emphasises how something gets started and then travels in perhaps unexpected ways -- offers an alternative toscaling, which we understand as the use of digital networks in a monocultural way to capture an ever-growing number of participants. Considering proliferation is, thus, a way to reorient and enrich discussions on impact, ambitions, modes of organising, and the use of collaborative technologies. In illustrating how these aspects relate inprocesses of proliferation, we offer CSCW an alternative vision of technology use and development that can help us make sense of the impact of sharing and collaborative economies, and design socio-technical infrastructures to support their flourishing.
Free access at DOI
Digital Object Identifier 10.1145/3492860
Other Identification Number merlin-id:21873
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