Responsible: Claude Henry, LIMSI-CNRS, France and Prof. Leopoldina Fortunati, University of Trieste, Italy

Participants: Boldur Barbat (Lucian Blaga University – Sibiu), Costin Pribeanu (National Institute for R&D in Informatics – Bucuresti), Beatrice van Bestelear (University of Namur), Pedro Gomez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Kari-Hans Kommonen (University of Art and Design Helsinki), Maria Koskijoki. (University of Art and Design Helsinki)

This workgroup was formed during the 3rd MC-meeting (Brussels, March 2000).

The group aimed to study the role of ICTs in relation to:

Associative/cooperative activities or ‘e-Associationnism’: Social networks, Civil Society (e.g. consumers, sick persons’ Internet networks, cultural interest-centred groups that are on-line).

Political society relating also to ‘e-Democracy’ debates (e.g. political parties’, trade unions’, political movements’, organisations’, government institutions’ use of ICTs.

Public institutions or e-Administration’ (e.g. municipalities’, regions’, state’s and social services’ use of ICTs).

Five intermediate objectives were identified:

• To analyse the information society (for whom and how in Europe), carried out with the assessment of the e-Europe project;
• To examine the uses of ICTs in social life and the consequent transformation of its aggregation mechanisms and modalities of socialisation;
• To elaborate an approach to the real problems and difficulties citizens encounter in many electronic initiatives carried out for enhancing the public life (problem of transparency included);
• To assess the possibilities for Web-sites to provide an active media for collective life in local communities
• To analyse the attempts to develop ICTs to support collective life.
  

Results

The ‘Membership/Community’ workgroup addressed not individual end users so much as collective users: collective users associations, political groups and movements, social networks and so on. The workgroup aimed to be part of a broader effort to build a coherent conceptual, methodological and technical framework for examining what is starting to be called at an international level ‘distributed collective practices’.

Over the course of a five-year period, the research was carried out in three stages, the first two of which took place in this work group, the third in the Extended Human workgroup.

During the first stage, which coincided with the first year of the COST269 Action, the workgroup built up an overview of existing and emerging debates at national and international levels on this topic.

During the second stage (the following two years), the workgroup conducted an extended analysis of some crucial points in the current debates, especially about e-Democracy and community and social uses of ICTs. This was done in close cooperation with other institutions sensitised to these themes, engineers from operators and other researchers and students from universities that were not members of the Action. This second stage was concluded in 2002.

One conclusion was that in the face of a large extension of individualism in our modern societies, and also in a close relation to this development, it is necessary to distinguish two movements. The first is the ‘communitarism’, where each individual is engaged with others often in a strong cultural connection. The second is the ‘associationism’, which comes from the tradition of the French socialist movement in the middle of the XIX° century (Henry, 2001. Distributed Collective Technologies for Co-operation: A Brief View from the French Experience).

A comprehensive framework for assessing ICT uses in collective activities was developed, based on: a) social criteria such as means of attraction, social cohesion, identification, definition of group boundaries, trusts, etc. (Henry, 2001); b) usability criteria such as comprehensibility, learnability, operability, attractiveness, etc. (Pribeanu, 2001. Some Aspects Regarding Usability Evaluation of Web Sites for Local Communities. Pribeanu, 2003. Towards a Framework for the Evaluation of Web-sites Intended to Support On-line Communities.)

Basic documents concerning e-Europe have been analysed and assessed using the proposed framework (van Bastelaer, 2001. eEurope and User Aspects of ICTs). Very little stress on uses and users was found. When some users are emphasised, such as disabled people and people with specific needs, it is not for their own benefit but rather for the potential market that they represent.

A grid for the analysis of ICTs in the field of political communication was suggested as regards political activities, political projections and political and social facts (Gómez Fernández, 2004. ICT's and Political Communication in a Cost Action Approach).

Research on on-line administration and one-stop Government was carried out by students from the University of Venice Ca' Foscari (Biolo et al, 2002. How Citizens and Services meet on the Net). The study aimed at monitoring the knowledge that citizens have of online social services and the use they make of these. The respondents reported that they use the Internet mainly to get information about services and timetables or to download forms, but in general do not fill in the forms online.

The introduction of ICTs can provide a great opportunity for greater savings and efficiency on the part of Public Administration and a greater source of information and control for citizens (Fortunati, L., 2002. Transparency and ICTs). However, to govern this process effectively certain considerations which have emerged here must be held in due account:

• The citizen does not coincide with the ICT user and vice versa. So if we aim to develop ICTs to implement transparency and efficiency in public life, we must promote effective strategies to include the citizen in the information society
• the following transitions must be managed at the same time:
  1. a movement from access to control;
  2. a transformation from tortuous bureaucratic language to clarity of expression
  3. a shift from communicating too much to saying something that is clear
• ICTs are not in themselves transparent technologies and so we need to multiply our efforts to make them more friendly and usable to all
• ICTs cannot solve all problems with transparency.