Reti sociali interorganizzative, tecnologie del sociale e autogoverno del territorio: l’avvio di una ricerca sul contesto romano

In this paper I present the first results of a research I am carrying out in Rome on the topic of social impacts and potential evolutions at local scale of ‘Computer mediated communication’ (CMC). On the theoretical level, I propose the ‘Polanyian’ notion of a ‘double movement’ produced inside the society by the increasingly pervasive digital mediation governed by the big commercial platforms: my hypothesis is that disintegrating processes coexist with the constitution of new social formations oriented to territorial cooperation. From a first field research attempt, I have developed a more articulated thesis that I will have to submit to further verification. The thesis is that the new social spatiality arising from the hybridization of online and offline relations is generating a specific social formation, which I call ‘Inter-organizational Social Network’ (RSI), and that this kind of "social innovation" is exerting a retroaction on the digital space from which can emerge alternative relational infrastructures definable ‘social technologies’.