DigiPatch Consortium Meeting

The objective of this event is to publicize the DigiPatch project, bring together members of the project consortium, and discuss the results and their dissemination and transfer.

 The lack of social cohesion, mistrust, and, ultimately, the absence of a common space where people can understand the world and interact, pose a risk to societies and democratic systems.To create policies and strategies that effectively contain these processes, it is necessary to understand and measure how they function in real life and the psychosocial foundations on which they are built.

In line with the above, the DigiPatch project pursues as its main objective to investigate the role of digitalization in social and cultural transformation, i.e., a process of moving parts of society from more open, permeable, flexible networks, to more closed, bounded, rigid “little boxes'' – a patchwork society. The project takes the 3N model as a starting point and background, and analyzes how some variables of interest, such as the loss of personal meaning, closed social environments (echo chambers) or exclusionary narratives, seasoned with certain key elements of our highly digitalized societies, can encourage the formation of extremist ‘micro-identities’ or those anchored in conspiracy beliefs, which tend to distrust institutions and form a more divided and polarized society.