Ubiquitous processes strengthening neighbourhood communities: How neighbourhood-related social media can foster the active involvement of citizens and build resilient communities

Abstract

Modern local communities are undergoing deep changes due to modern social and cultural processes and to the widespread use of ubiquitous, neighbourhood-related social media. Indeed, the latter shape citizens' experiences in terms of both local relationships and opportunities for shared aims and behaviours. Therefore, this study endeavours to unravel the impact of neighbourhood-related social media on users' sense of community (SoC), sense of responsible togetherness (SoRT), and perceptions of community resilience via their potential in enhancing their informal neighbouring behaviours and civic engagement. Nine hundred and sixty-five Italian citizens (30.1% males; M_age = 22.80; SD_age = 4.88) answered an online questionnaire; Structural Equation Modelling was used to run a multiple sequential mediation model having community resilience as the final outcome. The results confirm the positive relationship of such social media with users' informal neighbouring behaviours and civic engagement but show that only civic engagement mediates its relationships with SoC, SoRT, and perceptions of community resilience. Altogether, this opens interesting venues for future developments in both research and intervention fields, with reference to (a) further unravelling the intertwinement between online and local social dynamics and environments, and (b) better understanding how such intertwinement and this kind of social media could represent tools for the promotion of community building processes and of local resilience in community interventions.