DigiCapItaly: an operationalization proposal for the measurement of digital capital in Italy

The use of technology is nowadays increasingly widespread mainly because of the need to process, store and transmit large amounts of data. In fact, ICT, i.e. the set of modern information and communication technologies, constitutes a fundamental resource not only for the survival and improvement of superior organisms (companies, institutions), but also for the life of individuals. For the latter, this has given rise to a strong association between the possibility of making use of technology and the chance to be informed. In fact, users can gain infinite advantages or disadvantages, more or less material or immaterial, from the reality offered online thanks to the continuous exchange, accumulation and transfer of information, knowledge and news of various kinds. This accumulation of resources is not the same for everyone but occurs differently according to a number of pre-conditions that affect both the individual and the general context of which he or she is a part. The gap between those who are part of the digital society with its advantages and those who are partially or totally excluded from it (either by personal choice or because they are forced to do so) is known today as the Digital Divide (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2013; Van Dijk, 2006). Given the importance of technological resources (such as devices with access to the Internet), of the associated the possibility of assimilating, sharing and disseminating information, it can be said that the online reality has given rise to a new form of capital, Digital Capital, considered as the set of resources (tangible and intangible) born from the individual experience with technological devices.Although Digital Capital has modern and digital roots, it is still related to the different types of capital (social, economic, cultural, political, personal, symbolic) theorized during the 20th century (Hanifan, 1916; Bourdieu, 1988; Coleman, 1988; Becker, 1996; Putnam, 2004). Indeed, the full development of Digital Capital can create potential opportunities relevant to all other types of capital but not only, according to the theses of authors such as Van Dijk (2005, 2006), Park (2017), Ragnedda (2018, 2019), the interaction between these capitals and Digital Capital generates inequalities in both online and offline experience. Our contribution will introduce a project named DigiCapItaly, born from a partnership among the Federico II° Univerisy of Naples, the Northumbria University in Newcastle and the University of Salerno. This project is motivated by the epistemological need to create analytical and methodological tools to help understand the Digital Society, with a focus on the Italian case. In fact, according to the latest report drawn up by the European Commission regarding the DESI (2021), as well as the "Digital Economy and Society Index", Italy ranks 20th out of 27 EU Member States, with a score of 45.5 against the European average of 50.7 (on a range from 0 to 100). From this emerges the need to investigate the phenomenon of digital capital in the Italian context in order to improve awareness of this reality and to identify the contexts most at risk of digital divide. DigiCapItaly is part of a broader vein of research started by Ragnedda et al. (2019) focusing on the study of Digital Capital from a strongly empirically grounded perspective. It is the first, and so far only, attempt to give empirical consistency to the concept of Digital Capital in the social sciences. The authors also validated the operational definition with research based on a survey of a representative sample of UK inhabitants. DigiCapItaly is not only a natural progression of the original research, but it is in fact a new articulation of the empirical framework, extended to a different cultural context and with an updated operational proposal compared to the original one. The research objective is to study Digital Capital in the Italian context, further validating the original model. The research method is based on an online survey with a structured questionnaire. The sample involved will be representative of the Italian population for the variables of gender, age and macro-area of residence, in order to guarantee the generalization of the results