Rural Community Development Click-by-Click. Processes and dynamics of digitally supported social innovations in peripheral rural areas

Abstract

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, residents in peripheral and structurally weak rural areas began to move into the digital age. Digital tools are being used and developed to address existing challenges in rural areas such as local communication, healthcare or mobility. Against the background of a conceptual framework of social and digital innovations from a process perspective, this paper asks how the processes and dynamics of digitally supported social innovations in rural areas can be understood and described. By analysing five villages in Germany, we show that the digital initiatives – despite their different contexts, contents and driving actors – develop over three phases: an inspiration phase, an emergence phase and a consolidation phase. This dynamic process can be interpreted as “linear-circular”, because while overall a very targeted development of innovative problem solutions can be observed within the three-phase process, at the same time creative development loops and new inspirations exercise influence.

Socially Innovative Initiatives in Deprived Rural Areas of Germany, Ireland and Portugal: Exploring Empowerment and Impact on Community Development

“…In addition to the characteristics of the various dimensions described above, we observe a further empowerment effect, which has been mentioned as "mutually beneficial hydra-like constellations" [20] (p. 324): actors of the core group gained experience and recruited other actors who helped as a reinforcement of the initiative. Against the backdrop of experiencing self-efficacy (e.g., relatedness, impact and meaning), more courage and more ideas emerge-that is, further projects grow out of a grassroots project.…”

“…Building on focused ethnography [82], all studies are characterised by a combination of participant observations [83] within rural communities, expert interviews [84] conducted with both local and external experts, problem-centred interviews [85] with local actors and residents and document analyses [86] (see Table 3). For more details and already existing articles on the three projects or cases please see [14,17,20] for project 1, [19,36,39,47] for project 2 and [15,42,43,46] for project 3.…”

“…Such constellations of actors often launch project initiatives to devise solutions to rural challenges. They experiment with new practices and frequently even expand their projects with thematically related initiatives [20]. For example, in several places, the establishment of multifunctional village shops, village meeting places, co-working spaces and/or novel mobility solutions can be observed.…”