Studio dei fattori che possono aumentare il senso di comunità e la collaborazione in contesti di comunità locali urbane: il ruolo dei social media basati sul Web

The PhD thesis regards the study of the factors that can make vertical social media Web applications that are capable of supporting the communication, the collaboration and generally speaking the practices that constitute communities of place that are circumscribed in the urban context, such as zone associations, inhabitants of single neighborhoods and residents of the same condos. In order to study these factors we adopted a purposely multi-disciplinary approach that leveraged contributions from different but complementary disciplines like the sociology of communities and urban sociology, psychology of groups and communities, and the design sciences, especially those that are applied to the analysis, development and experimentation of interactive systems, that are usable as Web applications. This approach has led to the adoption of various techniques of qualitative research: the psychometric questionnaire, the semi-structured interview, the focus group and the action research. The research has been undertaken in collaboration and in parallel with the activities of a research team within the computer science department of the University of Milano-Bicocca. This has allowed for the mutual influence between our research and the development activities and for our concrete contribution to the incremental development of a number of modules that over time have been collected in the technological project dubbed "condiviviamo" on the Drupal content management platform. Our research has given the high level principles and some interaction requirements for the development of those modules and has also provided a feedback o the easiness of adoption of computational tools supporting community life also by lay people. In regard to the high level principles it resulted clear that the dominant model of messaging and user-driven content production, which is typical of social platforms of large diffusion and worldwide success should be flanked by more convivial tools, that is tools aimed at enabling, supporting and facilitating the establishment and management of activities to be carried out outside the virtual world and therefore in the reference territory of the community of place. This means to design systems with a particular care for the collaborative and cooperative element that could be capable to help citizens to reach common goals such as: to improve security and urban cleanliness, resolve small conflicts between neighbors, to help each other and exchange useful tools, save money with ethical and collective purchasing groups. This element has been identified as the main one that allow the people involved as members of a community of place to get a better mutual knowledge and acquaintance and therefore understand how to complement their skills, competencies and interests, so to improve the common life and place, without having to depend on the help of the authorities and of the formal public institutions. This awareness and the process of reciprocal acquaintance have been found to be the most important factors for the success and the continuous growth and evolution of local communities and elements that can improve and develop themselves further with the informed, aware and well-directed use of the new media and ICT, even outside the systems that are ingrained in the market economy and the capitalistic model of interpersonal relations and that, as such, can weaken conviviality of new social groups confronting the challenges of the increasing migration, the population aging, the disruption of the traditional family and the pervasiveness of technologies of the continuous monitoring and surreptitious control.