Digital networks, social capital, and poverty. An analysis for the city of Bahía Blanca

Abstract

In recent decades, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has modified individuals' means of information exchange. The possibility of interacting through digital media would then allow for increasing the participation of all community members, providing more significant communication opportunities for the entire population. The appearance of these new communication channels would allow those disadvantaged sectors to increase their social network, constituting this support a vital tool when reducing their levels of deprivation and making visible to the rest of the community those requirements necessary to improve their living conditions. However, this access to new digital communication channels would occur asymmetrically, and the impact of these tools may be null when enabling new social links or revitalizing existing ones. While some segments of the population would find themselves with significant restrictions to digital connectivity, another sector could prioritize other ways of interacting with the rest of the environment according to the needs the social environment could help solve. In this way, the impact these new digital platforms could have on social capital turns out to be a question to be resolved. In this sense, this work aims to study the relationship between the use of digital platforms and poverty as a mechanism for expanding social networks, specifically within the city of Bahía Blanca, Argentina. For this, information from a face-to-face survey carried out in Bahía Blanca in December 2021, Encuesta de Proyecto de Unidad Ejecutora (EPUE), was used.