Reviving community networks: hyperlocality and suprathresholding in Web 2.0 designs

Social scientists have identified a crisis of community in modern society, for example, Putnam’s (Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, New York, 2000) study of a 40-year decline of community in American society. We argue that the design palette of Web 2.0 offers critical affordances for community information and interaction that enable hyperlocality and suprathresholding. We describe a community-based participatory design research project through which we investigated the design characteristics of hyperlocality and suprathresholding. We speculate on the possibility of a new design model for community networks.