Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst

80% of the work and impact is social and institutional, 20% of the work and impact is technical.

We’ve found in our experiments with Smalltown that high quality participation on small social networks requires significant “social scaffolding.” Much of this scaffolding looks similar to what a local reporter or community organizer does. Connecting with people, asking questions, surfacing issues, building trust, and organizing. You can’t just buil... See more