Social exclusion, social capital, and local online centres

Yesterday to the Oxford Internet Institute for a session on 'digital disengagement' and social exclusion, where I learned the following from one reported study: 11% of those whose experience of exclusion is most entrenched (ie identified on several measures, not just one or two) are 'internet users.'

Without the source I can't unpack this stat, but I'd like to see more case studies to find out more about what people in this category are doing when they are connected, and what difference it makes to their lives. It happens that I'm involved in the evaluation of a 'social impact demonstrator' at a couple of UK online centres, so may be able to contribute in due course. And Citizens Online's Everybody Online projects should provide some insights.

As it turned out, the need for more qualitative research, to get at some subtleties that were not emerging from survey material, was a lesson for the OII from the seminar. One of the nuances that concerns me is the point that, irrespective of communication technologies, we don't know enough about the extent to which people who experience exclusion are strategic in their approach to weak ties.

People of all ages and classes and backgrounds can be strategic about their need for and approach to connections and friendships, without necessarily being cynically so. Is such behaviour as likely to be found among those whose experience of exclusion is most profound? Whether it tends to be or not will influence people's attitudes to the communication technologies, for example in recognising that mobiles are brilliant for strong ties but maybe not so good for establishing weak ties.

If your personal social network is sparse, then strong ties might be the ones you crave or seem to have most need for. Perhaps also you lack opportunities or skills (or both) to establish weak ties - these tend to require some basic cultural, social or economic capital to start with. But from the early work with UK online centres in low-income areas that I was involved in years ago, it was apparent that some people were establishing weak ties with remote others online, and gaining confidence and skills from that experience.

And right on cue, here's a paper by Sara Ferlander and Duncan Timms, which contrasts users' experience of a 'local net' in a low-income area, and in an 'IT-café'.

The paper examines the extent to which use of the Internet is associated with an enhancement of social participation, social trust and local identity in the area. The Local Net appears to have had limited success in meeting its goals; the IT-Café was more successful...

The IT-Café provided a physical meeting place which facilitated social networking, especially the development of weak ties bridging different local groups, and led to decreased tensions between them. The physical aspect of the IT-Café had positive impacts upon local ties and bonding social capital. Nonetheless, visitors to the Café, in common with the users of the Local Net, mainly used the Internet for non-local networking (bridging and linking social capital) including the creation and/or maintenance of both weak and strong, and interest-specific (bonding) ties. The Internet was used for the maintenance of non-local strong bonding social capital, with many visitors using the Internet to keep in touch with family and friends outside the local community.

It's not an either/or issue of course. And as I understand it (although this is only quietly mentioned) the two resources were sequential, the café established as the Local Net failed, and the latter seems to have been on far too large a scale, so there are all sorts of reasons why the comparison is speculative. It's highly likely that many of those who used the café were already blessed with sufficient confidence and social capital to take advantage of what was on offer. Indeed the authors accept that causal priorities are hard to establish, but 'the evidence suggests that an IT-Café, combining physical with virtual and the local with the global, may be especially well suited to build social capital and a sense of local community in a disadvantaged area.'

In my view this in no way discredits neighbourhood networks, but it does put a nice big tick in the Third Place box. And it sweetly reinforces what some of us were saying 10 years ago (The net result) about the need for local resource centres; or a few years later for example in a paper to government which I co-wrote in 2002:

• Access centres function best as part of wider generic community resources that attract local people for a range of activities. It is not realistic to expect them to become financially self-sustaining without distorting their roles, although they do tend to add value to whatever funding they receive;
• Where they are part of generic community resources, access centres fulfil fundamental social roles that contribute to government objectives on community cohesion, social capital, and community capacity building. They reach parts that other agencies cannot reach, and seen in this context they justify public funding. Such funding would need to reflect recognition of their role as community sector resources rather than as centres of formal learning.

Regrettably, government lost its nerve at about that time, and funding for the centres came with badly-misconceived requirements for formal learning, wholly inappropriate for the policy objective. Now they're wondering where the social inclusion results are going to come from.

Comments

[David Wilcox]

Thanks for giving us some perspective on these studies ... and reminding us that amidst he enthusiasm for social networking ala Facebook it the mix of media and relationships that are important. What thephase time in the cycle of forgetting these days? 2-3 years?

[Duncan Timms]

Following the end of funding for the internet Cafe Sara and I wrote about a number of neighbourhood groups have come into existence serving the same general area and combining ICT with ftf meetings and activities. We intend writing some more on the role of Internet Cafes as "third places" in mixed communities.