Information about the laboratory

Since 2003 year a small group of researchers of the Institute for System Analysis of Russian Academy of Science start the RFH funded projects (www.rfs.ru) in the field of researching the problems of the application of information and communications technologies to enable community processes and the achievement of community objectives. 

The main goal of this group of researchers was to integrate the conceptual approaches and methods of traditional analysis of using information technologies in communities (communities of local geographical area) and studying online communication of different groups of users of Internet. As a result of a discussion it appeared that the proposed objective could be covered by the term “Community Informatics”. And the based questions of studying emerging of such social forms as virtual communities, social networks, e-government can be effectively addressed in the proposed network paradigm.

After some years of working of this group of researchers, in 2010 year the Laboratory “Community Informatics” was formed at the Institute for System Analysis RAS. 

The main research areas of the laboratory were proclaimed as methodological issues of system analysis, becoming of virtual communities, networking analysis in science, technology and innovation, conceptual framework and methods of research of phenomena e-government.