Towards the Use of Social Computing for Social Inclusion: An Overview of the Literature

Social computing constitutes a new computing paradigm in an interdisciplinary research community which will strongly influence informatics systems and applications in the years to come. Indeed, from a social perspective, considerable interest in examining the influences of Social Computing (SC) for Social Inclusion (SI) arises from researchers and designers. This paper addresses the existing literature on the use of SC for SI. Previous studies have been reviewed to report affordances of SC design in five different areas: (a) for the elderly, (b) for people with disabilities, (c) for gender studies, (d) for societal change, and (e) for the preservation of cultural heritage. Results from the literature overview provide some examples of applications of new technologies that were designed to reduce social exclusion. Our review further shows that the use of different tools used by different groups of people has a positive impact for those people who are either socially included or excluded from their use. However, further research is needed in these five directions, which are analysed in this document and direct research into the gaps identified.