The functions of social interaction in the knowledge-creative economy: between co-presence and ICT-mediated social relations

This article challenges the relationship between face-to-face and ICT-mediated interaction among workers in the knowledge-creative economy in Milan, Italy. If a large body of literature supports the relevance of co-presence for the building of social capital, a growing body of empirical and theoretical researches dealing with online interaction shows that, under certain circumstances, connections mediated by digital tools are equally important. The extent to which professionals in these industries are embedded in “spaces” which are physical as well as digital, and how these have come to be so, remains nevertheless a less-explored research domain. This article will argue that professionals are embedded in a wider “space” of relations where exchanges mediated via ICTs productively intertwine with face-to-face exchange to determine new ways of searching for jobs and practicing work. It will do so by offering a unique outline on how face-to-face and ICT-mediated interaction combine in the context of Milan, commonly considered a Southern-European “creative city”. The paper will highlight the potentially new aspects that emerge when proximity becomes physical and digital, and where a mixture of face-to-face and ICT-mediated interaction profitably integrate together in a single domain, together with its contradiction and consequences, to show the necessity to overcome the rigid distinction between face-to-face and digital interaction that still characterises the empirical study of knowledge-creative economies.