ICTs Meanings and Practices: Contributions from the Social Representation Approach

Abstract

This paper aims at suggesting that a dialogical encounter between community informatics and social representations approach may bring positive insights to researchers interested in the relationships between ICTs and communities. Social representations are continuously negotiated, they provide communities with shared systems of knowledge within which attitudes can develop, and communications and behaviours become meaningful. Starting from these premises, social representations theory has proven itself adequate to study scientific and technological novelties, including ICTs. Research conducted in Italy will be presented to exemplify why social representation approach may provide an useful framework for doing research in community informatics