Community Psychologists in the face of ubiquitous settings: new and renewed skills and tools

The intertwinement between online and offline environments and processes has become pervasive in individual and community lives; this has been further speeded up and highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the measures containing it. Overall, these changes have required Community Psychologists to rethink their methodologies, approaches, and skills to adapt to such new, ubiquitous settings. Moving from our research focus on social settings becoming ubiquitous and on the stemming implications, in recent years we endeavored to adapt our methodologies to online and hybrid settings, questioning about the specific skills such shift would have required. Main examples are: (a) conducting online groups using several traditional methodologies during the pandemic (e.g., World Cafè; Gatti & Procentese, 2021); (b) using Instagram and online shared maps for sustaining citizens’ tie to their community during the Covid-19-related restrictions (Gatti et al., 2021); (c) promoting the participatory development of a mobile application aimed at collaboratively mapping youth social inclusion opportunities within the EU-project YouCount (Horizon2020). Based on these and other experiences, we would be interested in contributing to further addressing which skills Community Psychologists need to acquire or strengthen to properly work in ubiquitous and digital settings, and how to train and democratically develop them.