Querying Collaboration in Dissemination

This section foregrounds artifacts that have looked at collaboration as part of the dissemination process (including publication, etc.).

The following description (drafted prior to reading the works) outlines how we were thinking about this particular research life cycle phase:

AO (July 2018): Collaboration at the level of dissemination to me would seem to encompass the process of sharing the outputs produced from the research. For example, at iHub Research we ran a round table discussion with Nairobi technology developers to share key insights from a 6 month project that we conducted to understand how mobile phones were being used by Kenyans at the base of the economic pyramid. The project was run collaboratively with another research agency (called RSA) and so the Director from RSA and I (main author of the final report) sat down with about 10 developers and chatted about the research. I would consider this collaborative dissemination on two fronts: 1) two research organizations came together to do the sharing; 2) rather than just a one-sided reporting of findings, we sat down and fielded questions and opened up a discussion about the research. I hold this to be a more “collaborative” format for dissemination because it was centered around the interests and areas of inquiry of attendees (rather than the researchers). I think that especially amongst development practitioners and scholars, there is an increased expectation that research should be fed back to the communities that were studied (or relevant stakeholder groups that can use the research outputs). However, I’m sorry to say that this is still the exception and not the rule. Often the research process stops at artifact production.

This essay is part of a broader orals document querying collaborative formations. Works were categoried under one part of the “research life cycle” as a heuristic. Sub-essays within the orals doc can be accessed directly through the following links: Research Design (Artifacts | Analysis); Data Gathering and Production (Artifacts | Analysis); Data Analysis (Artifacts | Analysis); Artifact Production (Artifacts | Analysis); Dissemination (Artifacts | Analysis); Political Practice (Artifacts | Analysis).