Internet, Social Capital, and e-Inclusion in Post-Conflict Belfast: Expectations of Community Workers

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss Belfast community workers' expectations about the influence of the Internet on social capital and on social inclusion among youngsters from segregated areas of the city. For the purpose of conducting onsite research, we selected one of the main organizations working with young people and distributed a questionnaire among the organization's workers. The results show that according to the workers' expectations, the Internet is increasing the openness of youngsters' minds and their social integration, giving a glimmer of hope in light of the challenges of segregation; at the same time, those surveyed indicated that the Internet is not strengthening ties among the young people they work with. Secondly, we verified that different Internet use by the respondents correlated to different expectations, and we found a slight difference in expectations between “higher” and “lower” Internet users.

Keywords:

• Divided cities
• Belfast
• ICT
• social capital
• e-inclusion

Notes on Contributors

Francesca Savoldi is a PhD student of e-planning at the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Science and member of the e-Planning Lab. Email: [email protected]

Pedro Ferraz de Abreu is a professor in the faculty of sciene at the University of Lisbon, a research associate in the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the president of the Research Center on Information Technology and Participatory Democracy (CITIDEPT). Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. The members of the Protestant community are descended from settlers from England and Scotland who wish to preserve the political union with Britain. Conversely, Irish nationalists seek to abolish the border with the Irish Republic and establish a single unified Irish state. The two sides fought a decades-long civil war which resulted in around 3,000 deaths. The conflict ended with the Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998, which established a power-sharing executive made up of representatives of both communities to govern Northern Ireland, and an agreement that any future change in the status of the province would be by popular vote only.

2. Sunstain's conception of the term refers to greater interaction between like-minded individuals, which results in polarization