Co-Developing a Community Infrastructure with Lexington’s Latinx Community (RPA Pilot / Seed)

"Our multidisciplinary multi-stakeholder project entitled ""Co-Developing a Community Infrastructure with Lexington's Latinx Community,"" will build social and technical capacity amongst the Latinx community, as
part of a long-term strategy to construct a community sociotechnical infrastructure to address information marginalization. In our previous exploratory study (Phase I), we unveiled fundamental needs to address structural inequality from within the community. They include:
•Build capacity through digital literacy and education.
•Developing a team of Latinx community Promoters and Technical Intermediaries.
•Improve and test the web-based platform with the stakeholders (lay Latinx people, Civil Society partners, and Local Government).
Two theoretical frameworks guide this project. The Social Justice Education conceptual framework provides
a mechanism to analyze inequities experienced by communities at the individual, social, and institutional levels. The Alternative Sociotechnical Infrastructures framework explains how marginalized communities can respond to marginalization by building networks of technical, human, and organizational resources. We will employ a participatory action research (PAR) methodology emphasizing collaboration within the Latinx community to address the underlying causes of inequality while focusing on solutions to community concerns. We will conduct six community dialogues and twelve workshops to train community promoters. We will also test and co-design the digital platform prototype (petate.org). Data will consist of text, video transcripts, and images. We will analyze it inductively and iteratively using a Consensual Qualitative Research approach through several rounds of coding. Findings be validated by participants. We will evaluate the effectiveness of this project through the completion of the dialogues and workshops, pre- and post-testing, summative project assessment, and the improvement of the digital platform prototype. Our multidisciplinary research team is led by Dr. Fatima Espinoza Vasquez from the College of Communications and Information, Dr. Aurora Santiago Ortiz Co-researcher, and Dr. Gia Mudd-Martin from the college of Nursing, who will serve as a consultant."