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User:Sneha (CIS-A2K)/IR2022

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Draft Updates on CIS-A2K Research [July 2021- June 2022]

The CIS-A2K programme began work on a research component as a pilot initiative in 2019, and over the last three years aimed to work closely with and engage team members and communities in exploring and understanding existing and newer areas of work in the movement. While the objective initially was to diversify the nature of work within the programme, and collaborate and draw upon capacities and expertise in other areas of work at CIS, the primary motivations for work undertaken here have since evolved to include:

  • Identifying gaps, challenges, and opportunities related to various aspects of content creation, participation, learning, access and outreach in Indian language Wikimedia projects.
  • Developing recommendations and best practices towards addressing existing challenges and optimising available resources for the larger free knowledge movement.

As part of this pilot initiative, a series of six short term studies on diverse topics related to Wikimedia projects were undertaken in 2019-2021. The topics for these projects were drawn from existing areas of work within the team - on content creation and open access, strategies for multilingual pedagogy, disparities in content creation and participation related to gender gap/bias, areas of work needed on specific projects and campaigns. A compilation of these reports is now available on Wikimedia Commons.

Work on this component has continued over 2021-22, with a series of projects based on learnings from the previous studies as well as reflections on programmatic work done by the team over the last several years within Indian language Wikimedia communities. The three studies undertaken this year include:

  • Mapping Content on Gender and Sexuality in Indian languages: This study aimed to understand the nature of content creation on gender, sexuality and feminism in Indian languages, it’s digital documentation and possibilities of bringing the same online through open knowledge platforms such as Wikimedia projects. The methods for this research study comprised a total of 19 semi-structured interviews with key organisations and individuals working on content creation in these thematic areas. The study offers several learnings on disparities in content creation, and the need for an intersectional approach (including towards related work such as translation, digitisation and archiving), bridging technical and infrastructural gaps, facilitating better visibility and collaborations to enable content sharing, and capacity building. The final report was published in August 2022, and is available on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki.
  • Exploring Knowledge Repositories on Water Resources in India: The objective of this project is to understand better the impact of the digital transition on availability of water resources in India (with a focus on rivers), their documentation and wider public access. The project adopted a qualitative approach, comprising semi-structured interviews with selected organisations working in key thematic areas such as - awareness, training, planning/designing of projects, execution on ground, monitoring & evaluation, documenting/building archives related to water resources in India. While a total of eight institutions were shortlisted, detailed interviews were conducted with three of them, given constraints on in-person meetings and technical challenges with online meetings. Data analysis and report writing is currently underway, and the final report is to be published shortly.
  • Study on Infrastructural Needs of Indian Language Wikisource Projects: The objective of this study is to identify current needs and challenges of Indian Language Wikisource projects, with a focus on knowledge gaps in technological capacity, resources and training. The study also aims to present a set of learnings and recommendations on potential strategies to address these gaps, including through collaborative intervention and training. The project adopted a mixed methods approach comprising a survey, and interviews with key community members. However, the interviews could not be undertaken given several logistical challenges, and difficulties in engaging community members. Hence the team worked on a final report based on the survey data, which has been completed and shared for internal review with the team. The final report is to be published shortly.


Research Dissemination

The team has also worked on sharing research outputs not only within the Wikimedia communities, but also a wider audience, including key stakeholders within the open knowledge movement, cultural and other like-minded organisations and academia. Some of the key events where research work was presented between July 2021 -June 2022 include:

In addition to the above, learnings from research work have also been shared at talks and workshops organised at academic institutions, in an effort to engage a wider network of collaborators. An internal research dissemination strategy was also developed and discussed, with work led by the research associate with support from the team.


Learnings

The research studies undertaken over 2019-21, and those completed earlier have offered several learnings, not only in terms of the existing knowledge gaps across different Wikimedia projects, or newer, unexplored areas of work, but also motivations, process, relevance and impact. The process of building and structuring the overall research component, including refining its objectives and scope has been a challenging exercise, given that it has been a pilot initiative, and limited availability of research undertaken by community members in the Indian context. The research projects have also been led by team members with differing areas of interest and skills, and hence have evolved along with a steep learning curve in building certain kinds of capacity in research design, data collection and analysis, report writing, review and dissemination. The process has therefore been a difficult but enriching one, with attention to motivations and relevance of the research being undertaken, methodology and ethics, and centering experiences of working closely with the Indian language communities.

There have also been challenges with the present structure of the research component, where work has largely been led by team members working on individual projects, some in collaboration with community members/collaborators, with oversight by the research officer . In addition to the limited availability of and engagement with research work undertaken within Indian language communities, and diverse capacities within the team mentioned earlier, an important concern has been addressing questions around a nuanced framing of the need for research, its relevance and impact within communities, as well as logistical issues given conflations with programmatic work. As observed in the course of the projects undertaken in 2019-21, as well is the current work discussions and understanding around research has largely focused on short-term impact, including identifying specific problems and solutions rather than an understanding of larger systemic or infrastructural issues. While this approach is indeed helpful to address immediate problems, it offers little scope in terms of developing a long-term, sustainable approach towards developing a structure for research work to be undertaken, or reflection on its outcomes and impact. Given these observations, and lack of a long-term outlook, the team has decided to close the research component as a part of the APG programme. The nine projects undertaken over 2019-2022, and their learnings are documented on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, and will hopefully continue to inform any further work in the field.

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