Use of domain ontology for representing people digital participation during emergency situation.

Vulnerable communities have used social media (SM) to struggle the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic. Through the SM, people collected donations, disseminated useful information, and carried out prevention activities. However, using the Capability Approach (CA) and Affordances Theory (AT) as theoretical lens, we have observed that SM tools enabled, but also restricted conversion factors that would make it possible to achieve individual capabilities. Research indicates that IT artifacts such as domain ontologies can serve to integrate social media information and mitigate the effects of digital divide, filling the design gap identified in social tools that provide top-down solutions. Furthermore, this work uses design science research (DSR) to propose an IT artifact, the resilience ontology, built and validated based on secondary data from interviews with individuals from vulnerable communities and materials extracted from social media during pandemic. As result, we claim that this artifact can be used by researchers and practitioners who want to promote the integration between people and information in social media, mitigating digital divide and promoting human development.