MCIN

MCIN ran a conference in Manchester on October 16th along with Manchester Metropolitan University and CN4M, a community empowerment network, on Social Capital and Community Cohesion. Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University, who is a world leader in social capital and social networking, spoke on the role of social capital and its policy impact. Over 160 people attended from different sectors including the Third Sector, Higher Education and the Statutory sector. The conference highlighted good local practice in social networking, including case studies on ICT and the homeless. Ed Cox, a commissioner on the Government’s Commission for Cohesion and Integration spoke about broader government policy in this area. Other speakers included Councillor Maryam Khan, Manchester City Council’s executive member for race and equality and Patrick Hanfling who spoke on his work on sense of place. Brian Kelly explained the research taking place on social capital within Manchester. A detailed action plan on how to take this agenda forward was developed as a result of the conference and a group of people will be taking this forward. To see Robert Putnams presentation click here 

Thanks for the link to the paper on the Social Capital and ICT board . Its very interesting reading. You might be interested in a conference MCIN is running in Manchester on the 16th October along with Manchester Metropolitan University, and CN4M a community empowerment network on social capital and community cohesion, which Robert Puttnam who is a world leader in this area is speaking at. You can find the details on the mymanchester web site. We have about 160 people coming from different sectors and I will be speaking on ICT and Social Capital. We are planning to Web Cast it so if you want to see it please contact Sophie and she can link you up with the web cast. sophiefosker@googlemail.com <sophiefosker@googlemail.com> There will also be a blog after the event with the video and the final report on.

See the link below. Interesting paper

Impact of local ICT Iniatives on Social Capital and quality of life. produced by Chimera University of essex April 2006

http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/content/pubs/wps/CWP-2006-06-Local-ICT-Social-Capital.pdf

There does not appear to be any research on the use of ICT to support bridging social capital. I Know from informal disucssions with web connect users that this takes place but how can you measure it. Also there is massive discussion about social cohesion. Anyone know any research that exists uses ICT in order to improve social cohesion. Some of the wok that MCIN does around developing web based content is promoting social cohesion look at our community media stuff. How can we measure this?