Research | Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Lab | School of Information Sciences

New Book Published on Digital Equity Ecosystems

Title of book shown against a black background, which is above a picture of blue water in an estuary surrounded by greenery and a flock of white birds seen from above.

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book, titled “Digital Equity Ecosystems: How Community Coalitions Reduce Inequality and Strengthen Democracy” is now available from the University of California Press. The book introduces an ecosystem approach to study and understand the role of community coalitions in promoting digital equity and social justice. In addition, the book describes how these coalitions work to protect the environment through technology refurbishing while also providing spaces for democratic communication and civic participation in public life.

The book was featured in the iSchools Book Talk series and more information about the book can be found online at the publisher’s website.

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction, which describes the main argument and goals for the book.

In this book, I highlight and uplift stories of “ordinary” people—including educators, librarians, pastors, managers, neighbors, parents, and friends— doing extraordinary things in communities to help other people and our planet. This book underscores how a sense of community can be built by listening and paying attention to these everyday social interactions focused on care. The pandemic reminded us about the importance of digital technologies in our everyday lives, as well as about the face-to-face interactions that we need to solve problems and heal our natural world. However, if we are going to continue this work, we must move beyond an embrace of individualism and towards an embrace of interconnectedness with each other and the earth. By focusing on human and community interactions such as those highlighted in this book, I believe we can learn more about the things that connect us at a basic human level, which can also inspire us to create a better world for one another. At the same time, we must continue to question the role of digital technologies in supporting or limiting the possibilities for such interconnectedness.

Public Engagement Summit Presentation

Five people are in a conference room: four standing near a podium and one seated. A person at the podium is presenting a PowerPoint slide titled

On Friday, April 17th, DEAR Lab members (pictured right), Dr. Colin Rhinesmith along with Elliot Barber (on Zoom), Isabel Braico, Mads Christiansen, and Bashi Hariharan Yasodha, joined our community partner, Anne Slaughter, RAILS Director of Technology Service at the Public Engagement Summit.

During the Summit, we presented our case study titled “Building the Digital Equity Capacity of Illinois Public Libraries.” As our abstract describes,

This presentation will cover the key findings and strategic directions for a research initiative in partnership between the Digital Equity Research Lab at Illinois and the Reaching Across Illinois Library System to investigate the capacity of public libraries to address the digital equity needs of their communities.

As we described in our presentation, Boyer’s (1996) “scholarship of engagement,” along with Barker’s (2004) “taxonomy of engaged scholarship” were particularly useful in describing our approach to engaged research with Anne and her team at RAILS. It was also wonderful to join Anne to co-present on our work together and future plans moving forward. The full presentation slides can be found here on IDEALS.

The Journal of Community Informatics: Advancing Engaged Information Sciences

Screenshot of the iSchools Community Informatics Group webpage, showing a description of the groups focus on using information and communication technologies to help diverse communities, with navigation links and logos at the top. (Alt text generated by alttext.ai)

It was wonderful to co-lead our iSchools Community Informatics Group session yesterday, during iConference 2026 in Edinburgh, Scotland, with my colleague and The Journal of Community Informatics co-editor-in-chief, Dr. Khalid Hossain, Research Fellow in the Department of Human Centred Computing at Monash University.

During the session, we introduced our iSchools Community Informatics Group and had a productive brainstorming session about potential topics for future special issues of The Journal of Community Informatics. There was some excitement around the idea of developing a special issue on alternative research methods, including the use of games and other forms of community-engaged and participatory design and research methods.

Here is a link to the slides from our session.

Book Talk at MSU Quello Center

Flyer for a Quello Center event featuring Colin Rhinesmith, promoting a Zoom talk on Feb. 18 at 11 AM ET about digital equity ecosystems and community coalitions. A photo of Colin, wearing glasses, is on the right (alt text by Alttext.ai).

I will be giving my first book talk on Wednesday, February 18th at 11:00am (EST) at the Quello Center at Michigan State University, where I am a Research Fellow. The book will be published in June 2026 by the University of California Press. Here is the link to the event on the Quello Center’s website.

The talk will be online and the link to register is below.

Digital Equity Ecosystems:
How Community Coalitions Reduce Inequality and Strengthen Democracy

a talk with Colin Rhinesmith, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Join us on February 18, 2026, from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET for a stimulating talk!

Use the link here to register for the Zoom webinar: https://tinyurl.com/47ukftct

Presenting My Research at ASIS&T 2025

As a member of the Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Lab, I spend much of my time thinking about how technology, learning, and community realities intersect, especially in rural and underserved settings. This year, I had the opportunity to share a part of my work at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology in Washington, DC.

My presentation, Beyond Technology First Narratives, Reframing Rural Educators as Information Professionals, is one piece of my research on understanding and highlighting the real conditions that shape educational technology use in rural Nigeria. In many national conversations, technology is framed as the solution to educational challenges, but the day-to-day work of rural educators tells a different story. They not only function as teachers, but they have taken up roles that place them to function as information professionals. They function as trusted information guides, curriculum interpreters, community advocates, and local knowledge organizers. These roles look a lot like the work done by information professionals, even though they are rarely recognized as such.

Sharing this at ASIS&T gave me the chance to highlight the importance of my work. When we view rural educators as information actors, it alters our perspective on technology design and policy. Instead of still imposing tools that assume urban or Western conditions, systems that reflect the lived realities of rural communities would be built. This perspective reframes global conversations on digital equity toward approaches that value local knowledge rather than overwrite it.

Although this work focuses on Nigeria, the issues connect to rural communities worldwide. Lots of regions face similar challenges in terms of infrastructure, language, and access to relevant information. By highlighting the people who already support learning in these contexts, my research contributes to broader conversations about how we can design more inclusive educational technologies and policies.

If you’d like to see the poster I presented, you can access it here.

My work aligns with global efforts to create more inclusive, community-driven approaches to technology and education, inviting researchers, policymakers, and EdTech designers to recognize that meaningful digital equity begins with understanding the people who shape learning every day. I look forward to the next phases of this project, which will involve deeper community-based research and international collaboration.

DNHV: Report Highlights and Recommendations

The Southeastern New York Library Council released a new report today, titled “DNHV: Report Highlights and Recommendations.” I am thrilled to have played a small part in this report, which outlines the findings from research on data gathered by the Southeastern NY Library Resources Council about the Digital Navigators of the Hudson Valley program between 2022–2024.

Here’s an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

“L&G Research and Evaluation Consulting, working in partnership with the Digital Equity Research Center at the Metropolitan New York Library Council, analyzed data gathered by the Southeastern NY Library Council about the Digital Navigator program between 2022–2024. The research team found many benefits for public libraries, underscoring the necessity of these services for libraries and other community-based organizations in their regions. Because nationwide indicators for measuring the outcomes and impacts of Digital Navigator programs do not currently exist, we believe the findings in this report will help to inform efforts to develop indicators in the future.”

Download the full executive summary and summary of data findings to learn more about the impact of the program.

New Digital Equity Research Project with RAILS

We are thrilled to partner with the data and technology team at the Reaching Across Illinois Library System on a new project to investigate the digital equity capacity of Illinois libraries!

While existing studies have identified the role of public libraries in addressing their communities’ digital equity needs, there is little research on the digital equity capacity of public libraries in Illinois. For example, existing scholarship has documented the digital inclusion services provided by public libraries across the U.S. Other studies have examined the role of “Digital Navigators” in addressing a communities’ digital needs beyond the walls of the public library. Several dissertations at Illinois have sought to address gaps in the existing scholarship on public libraries, digital inclusion, and broadband infrastructure. But there is currently a lack of research on the digital equity capacity of Illinois libraries that can be helpful to state and regional library agencies working to support these libraries.

This research seeks to address this gap in practice and scholarship through a partnership with the data and technology services team at the Reaching Across Illinois Library System. The purpose of the research is to achieve through the following objectives: (1) determine effective ways to measure the digital equity and literacy needs of the populations served by RAILS libraries; (2) identify key methods of collecting and interpreting data about the effectiveness of digital equity resources in RAILS libraries; and (3) establish key metrics that can be used to measure the effectiveness and impacts of a digital equity program or model for public libraries in Illinois.

New Book Cover Design

I am excited to share the cover design (pictured right) for my forthcoming book, titled Digital Equity Ecosystems: How Community Coalitions Reduce Inequality and Strengthen Democracy, which will be published by the University of California Press in 2026.

The description of the book from UC Press is below.

“Digital Equity Ecosystems introduces readers to the groundswell of community coalitions that work to alleviate technological inequity and social injustice. Through a comprehensive review of theories and concepts across the fields of information, communication, technology, and public health studies, Colin Rhinesmith reveals how the digital equity ecosystems framework is essential for addressing urgent digital inequalities. Investigating five original case studies of digital equity ecosystems across the United States, Rhinesmith shows how community coalitions serve as vital infrastructure to tackle digital inequality and strengthen democracy. By focusing on these ecosystems as sites for community engagement, civic participation, and social justice organizing, this book helps us make sense of the current moment, arguing that it is crucial to bridge both the digital divide and other social divides more broadly at a time when democracies are in decline worldwide.”

New Article in Journal of Information Policy

Thrilled to have another journal article published this year, titled “Beyond Access and Infrastructure: Evaluating the Impact of Local Contexts on Digital Equity Strategies Through the Lens of the Digital Opportunities Compass.” The article was co-authored with my wonderful colleagues Dr. Pierrette Renée Dagg, Dr. Megan Knittel, and Joon Oh revised from an earlier version originally presented at The Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC) 2024.

Here is the abstract:

“This article presents a multiple case study of context in shaping local digital equity policies in three communities in Michigan, United States. Few studies have systematically investigated local context to understand its potential impacts on the development of sustainable information policies in rural communities. By applying the Digital Opportunities Compass, a framework for examining contextual factors that impact community-based digital equity programs and policy, the study found that local context can both positively and negatively impact the development of policies and programs. These findings have implications for local and state policymaking, particularly for considering the community assets and invested champions.”

New Article Published in Journal of Participatory Research Methods

Sangha Kang-Le and I have a new peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Participatory Research Methods. The article, titled “Understanding the Value of a Digital Equity Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration Using Participatory Action Research,” presents an in-depth analysis of the participatory approach we used to produce our (2023) white paper, “Developing a digital equity theory of change with Tech Goes Home” while I was at the Digital Equity Research Center at METRO and Sangha was at Tech Goes Home.

Here’s the abstract from the article:

Digital equity has been defined as a social justice issue. However, there is currently a lack of scholarship that describes how participatory action research (PAR), as a scholar-activist approach, has been used to advance digital equity and social justice through researcher-practitioner collaborations. In response to this gap in the literature, this study presents on an in-depth reflection on how we used PAR in a research project with findings that were previously published in a white paper in 2023. This current paper seeks to respond to the following research question: What is the value of a researcher-practitioner collaboration using PAR to advance digital equity as a social justice issue? To answer this question, we used our project team’s meeting minutes as a source of evidence. More concretely, this thirty-three-page meeting minutes document provided the evidence that we used to respond to the list of thirty-five questions from Cornish et al.’s (2023) six “prompts for designing a PAR project.” This approach provided us with a structured approach to reflect on and articulate the value of using PAR to guide our work together over an eleven-month period. The purpose of this current study is to address a gap in the existing digital equity literature and to more deeply reflect on our collaboration using PAR as a research/practitioner team. As researchers and practitioners working together to advance digital equity, our study found tremendous value in using PAR to create a theory of change, particularly in the context of the current $65 billion investment in universal broadband infrastructure and digital equity in the United States over the next five years, particularly to ensure that those most impacted by the digital divide are represented in solutions to the problems identified by the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act of 2021.