Complexity and Social Networks Blog

« Life in the Network: The Coming Era of Computational Social Science | Main | The winners of the "Competition on visualizing network dynamics” »

8 May 2007

EU policy: Can Social Software facilitate the inclusion of immigrants and minorities?

Today's blog entry raises the question to our readers how social software could facilitate the inclusion of immigrants and minorities. Furthermore, there is a link to two post-doc positions.

I recently attended a EU policy finding workshop which aimed to contribute ideas and suggestions drawn from social capital and ICT (Web20, social software) perspective to the preparation process of the EC Communication (2007) and subsequent Initiative (2008) on eInclusion within the i2010 framework initiative. The Riga Ministerial Declaration dentified the participation by immigrants and ethnic minorities (IEM) in the European information society as important to improve their possibilities for economic and social participation and integration, creativity and entrepreneurship. Greater employability and productivity of minorities are specifically mentioned as a target, for which tailored ICT training and support actions are deemed to be important.

The following questions guided our discussions during the workshop which I would like to post here to collect further ideas and suggestions:

- Under which conditions can social capital be used as a lever to counter a number of risks of digital exclusion and to exploit ICT-enabled opportunities to promote greater socio-economic integration and cultural diversity?

- Which contribution especially in a social capital enhancing perspective, can new ICT applications and services (particularly mobile phone and social computing) make to address crucial integration challenges, on the one hand, and to support the creative and entrepreneurial usage of ICT by IEM, on the other?

- Which kind of instruments can the European Commission mobilise to enhance social capital and its cohesive effects through the use ICT? How should innovation and research agendas be inspired to respond to the considered challenges? How successful experiences can be best replicated?

Accordingly, recommendations were structured around the following areas: deepening understanding, research and innnovation, cooperation, awareness & marketing, good practice promotion, monitoring and benachmaring, legislative action and finally provision of "public" services. Now its your turn. One example for an "immigrant" oriented website was a project in the Netherlands for Moroccans.

Besides your comments to this blog you can also go directly to the eInclusion of immigrants and minorities project website and gather more information or share your ideas.

There are also two post-doc positions available at IPTS in lovely Seville, Spain. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is one of the seven scientific institutes of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) so you should work in a very interesting environment. Paul Timmers who is leading the project was the former head of the EU eGovernment Unit. If you are interested in investigating, from a technological and socio-economic point of view, the future of eServices and Web 2.0 technologies, and have knowledge in one or several of the following research lines: eInclusion, eLearning, eGovernment and eHealth you should send them your CV by no later than May 25.!

Posted by Alexander Schellong at May 8, 2007 12:00 AM

.
• Business (2)
.
• Citizen Relationship Management (13)
.
• Commentary (5)
.
• Complexity (2)
.
• Current Trends (40)
.
• eGovernment (15)
.
• Events/Announcements (51)
.
• Innovation (12)
.
• Internet (14)
.
• Knowledge Sharing (16)
.
• Methodology (28)
.
• Networked Governance (14)
.
• Networks in political science (1)
.
• PNG Working Paper Series (6)
.
• Powerlaws (4)
.
• Reviews (2)
.
• Simulations (1)
.
• Small group networks (3)
.
• Small Worlds (2)
.
• SN in the news (56)
.
• Social Capital (2)
.
• Social Computing (9)
.
• Social Finance (1)
.
• Social Networking Platforms (8)
.
• Social Psychology (2)
.
• Social Software (22)
.
• Societal Networks (33)
.
• Technology (27)

Comments

Posted by: jason at June 4, 2007 9:46 PM

Notification

Post a comment