Digital administration

Terminology and the perception of innovation

Abstract

This paper aims at illustrating how digital innovation in Italy is being communicated to the general public and how it is perceived by public administration workers. The digital revolution has introduced new concepts which have either brought about new terms or has given a new meaning to existing ones. Through a corpus–based pilot study, the terminology found in different specialized corpora, i.e. laws and regulations concerning e–government, and national and local newspapers, is compared and contrasted. The methodology involves both a linguistic analysis of the terms extracted from laws and newspapers, and a sociological analysis based on the answers given to a questionnaire concerning the main effects of digitization in the offices of the University of Calabria and administered to a group of its workers. This comparison will allow us on the one hand to show if the same terms are used in the three corpora and if they are given the same meaning; on the other hand to explore if and how digital innovation is understood, used and evaluated by public administration workers.