Mapping Informal Organization Through Urban Activism: The Case of Self-Organized Spaces in the City of Naples

Abstract

The Naples associative dimension "from below" is considered to be a unicum at national and international level. This paper develops an exploratory research project looking at urban community hubs as social and political networks detectable by virtue of their organizational informality, exploiting the potential of data mining from social-media platforms in a user generated way. After a preliminary investigation to collect a list of active organizations in Naples, we have identified 32 organizations that have preserved some key elements over time: denomination, location, main actors. Then, we have verified and mapped the correspondence of their performed activities with the priority themes of the cultural production system defined by the European Urban Agenda. Therefore, we have built a dataset from Facebook events promoted by urban organizations and its participants; then, we have analyzed it through qualitative and quantitative data mining, and finally, we have visualized it and then proposed a cultural interpretation. The main expected results have been: firstly, to explore the proximity of the considered entities by comparison of the geographical and the social network space; secondly, to contribute to the scientific debate about the "relational ecosystem in the cities" both in theory and methods. The potential implication of this study could be considered in both fields of the interdisciplinarity of academic theories and methods, because of the proposal and use of both social sciences and statistical knowledge, and in the field of the policy strategy, because of the possibility of exploitation as a tool able to intercept the social capital of the territory and monitor the action of informal organizations operating in that territory.