"Everyone is Covered": Exploring the Role of Online Interactions in Facilitating Connection and Social Support in Black Churches

Title of the Paper

"Everyone is Covered": Exploring the Role of Online Interactions in Facilitating Connection and Social Support in Black Churches

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Online Communities, Techno-Spirituality
• Keywords: Techno-Spirituality, Service Design, Social Support, Online Communities, Hybrid Communities, Black Civil Rights, COVID-19, Religious Practices, Marginalized Groups, Community Culture

Research Background and Problem

• Problem or Challenge: Focusing on Black civil rights churches, this paper explores how online interactions can help overcome the limitations of reduced face-to-face interactions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and examines how such technology-supported online communities can naturally integrate offline/online interactions. Although religious institutions have experimented with online interaction formats, our understanding of how technology integrates with the unique values and cultural identities of these communities remains limited.
• Significance: For groups heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions to provide social support (e.g., Black civil rights churches primarily serving low-resource Black communities), the design and optimization of online communities are crucial to ensuring these institutions can continue their historic role in community support.
• Research Motivation and Related Work: Using Black civil rights churches as a case study, this research addresses the gap in understanding how technology can enhance their cultural independence and community support functions, while advancing the exploration of "hybrid" community practices in the field of HCI.

Solution

• Proposed Solution:

  • Develop and test an online community prototype called "Church Connect Community," designed to extend the church's social support functions through features such as online groups, challenge activities, and forum discussions.
  • Employ a nine-week community-based participatory research design, combining interviews and user feedback to deeply explore the needs and expectations of Black civil rights churches in online interactions.

• Innovative Aspects:

  • Proposed evidence-based technology design recommendations that directly link collective efficacy with church cultural values.
  • Provided a preliminary framework for embedding cultural identity into online communities specifically for Black civil rights churches.
  • Emphasized the mapping relationship between online and offline community roles and the design needs for leadership roles.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  • Phase 1: Conduct interviews to understand the structure of various care networks within the church and the barriers to their online migration.
  • Phase 2: Design and develop a technology probe (prototype) to help members experiment with an online community platform.
  • Phase 3: Evaluate user experience, including advancing feature iterations and forming further design recommendations.
  • The methodology combines qualitative interviews, focus groups, quantitative surveys, and iterative feedback integrated into the design probe.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Identified three main care network structures in Black civil rights churches (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one) and clarified their roles in meeting members' psychosocial needs.
  • Determined key values to prioritize in online community design: inclusivity, diverse interactions, safe support, inspiration, and information dissemination.
  • Provided specific design improvement ideas, such as embedding regular online "check-in" features to maintain social connections among members.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Emphasized deep integration of cultural context, enabling new technologies to naturally embed within religious communities.
  • Focused not only on technological feature iteration but also on exploring how assigning online roles can support shared community goals, forming more robust hybrid social networks.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • Users preferred features aligned with the church's core values, such as fostering social connections and spiritual growth rather than material rewards.
  • Challenge tasks and partner systems emerged as highly engaging modules favored by users.
  • Feedback revealed that members were more likely to remain active in environments where role objectives were clear and autonomy was high.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    • Small sample size, with participants primarily being church leaders, which may not represent the overall needs of regular church members.
    • Focused mainly on specific faith communities in the northeastern United States, lacking horizontal comparisons across different regions and cultural contexts.
  • Future Directions:
    • Expand the sample size to include a more diverse range of congregants in terms of age and social roles to enhance the generalizability of the findings.
    • Explore broader hybrid community models, examining the interplay between hidden role assignments and the proportion of technological engagement for success.

Conclusion and Design Implications

• This study provides a reference for designing culturally extended hybrid human-computer interaction systems, particularly for establishing online support networks in religious and marginalized communities.
• It highlights clear user-driven needs (e.g., dual functionality for "spiritual life + social support"), suggesting that future hybrid community theories should incorporate broader individual-specific values (spirituality or identity connection).