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AbstractMany housing organizations are using social media to engage with a range of stakeholders including tenants. Tenant participation is being reworked in social media spaces as different (previously more separable) audiences are brought together in a digitalized ‘context collapse’. This multi-method study examines the emerging social media practices of housing organizations in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Datasets generated in 2015 and 2021 include two digital audits of housing providers’ social media use, and in-depth qualitative interviews and focus groups with 26 social housing representatives. Participants reported that three intersecting agendas shape their social media use: 1) tenant participation and engagement, 2) advocacy for social housing, and 3) marketing and promotion, which create challenges that housing organizations must navigate in digital spaces. As critical tenant perspectives can present a threat to organizational brand identity and reputation, organizational social media use/s can seek to weaken or hide tenant voices at a time when tenant rights are more important than ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Place-based community networks provide a resource that can be drawn on to protect and promote the wellbeing of residents. We investigate the role of social networking sites (SNSs) in community formation in a new master-planned, mixed tenure, affordable housing estate in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Waimahia Inlet was developed by a consortium of Māori organizations and community housing providers. Community formation was an explicit developer goal with public spaces to encourage face-to-face interaction designed into the development and social infrastructure nurtured on site. New residents were invited to join a closed Facebook group, created and moderated by a residents' association set up by the developer. In-depth interviews with 38 residents between 2017/18 revealed synergies between residents' use of online and offline interactional spaces for producing and performing an engaged and supportive community. Neighbourhood networks contributed to strengthened attachment to place and sense of security by residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines potentials for using the philosophies and practices of participatory action research (PAR) within the production of housing. Drawing on findings from a collaborative build project, working with a group in housing need in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, the paper explores the added social and educational value that processes of collaborative design and making can offer those that might be socially and spatially isolated. The paper argues that participation in housing is often colonized by those that have existing social, economic or knowledge capital and therefore bringing PAR into conversation with housing offers some unique opportunities, and also challenges, that other forms of collaborative housing may not. In assessing these opportunities the paper focuses on the mechanics of participation, including ethics, processes of learning through making, power, care and the potential for personal and collective transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]