Free for all? Knowledge as a barrier in technopolitical communities in Spain
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Optimistic visions of its liberating potential have accompanied the Internet since its inception. However, technopolitical communities have defended free knowledge, but they risk adopting liberal notions when there is a group hierarchy depending on technological skills or the time people invest in the project (Coleman & Golub, 2008; Crabu et al., 2016). Using a combined methodology, we aim to understand the decision-making and training processes of technopolitical communities in Spain. Results show that these projects are collective, and their communities are aligned with the availability of public materials on the Internet for individual learning and mutual support values. However, they must consider developing better-established training and decision-making strategies to attract more people and more diverse profiles. Otherwise, there is a risk of generating an elite of experts who may enjoy free knowledge but cannot effectively collectivize it and disrupt the context of informational capitalism.
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(c) Dafne Calvo, Eva Campos-Domínguez, 2022
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Dafne Calvo, University of Valencia
Ph.D. in Communication and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Valencia. With several stays in international research centers, she has worked as a team member in different competitive research projects at a national level since 2014. She combines her academic activity with collaboration in various journalistic productions, meetings, and events on free culture.
Eva Campos-Domínguez, University of Valladolid
Ph.D. in Communication and PhD with distinction at the Complutense University of Madrid, Fellowship of Parliament for Ph.D.’s research. Currently, she is professor in the degree, postgraduate and doctorate in Journalism Studies at the University of Valladolid. Her main research areas are parliamentary cyberdemocracy, political communication; online journalism. She has studied the development of Spain’s Congress of Deputies Parliamentary Communication on the Internet from 2004 to the present.
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