University Extension in Information Science: a critical participatory approach

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

The current society has been identified as the Information Society. Questions related to information and its flow are instigated to its understanding and social influence, taking into account documents, varied contents and subjects, diversified behaviors and people who use, receive and reproduce information. The university has the role of contributing to the transformation, training and social awareness from the inseparability between teaching, research and extension by impacting on the personal and professional formation of society, however, the small amount of publication in information science, on the extension university in the community in a situation of social vulnerability, provokes us to question the social relevance of the Extension Program of the Department of Information Science of the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

Objective:

Thus, through an analysis of the extension in information science, this research article in progress, has the following objective: to reflect on the importance and social relevance of the extension carried out in the community in a situation of social vulnerability. Methodology: used is qualitative with an interpretive critical approach, in two distinct and connected moments: the bibliographical research, in this study, and the field research in the data collection.

Result:

the practice of participatory extension is evident where, in an interdisciplinary and democratic way, the distance between the academic world and the periphery community, between scientific and popular knowledge, can be reduced through university extension in Information Science.

Conclusion:

These will be confirmed or not at the conclusion of the ongoing field research through interviews and document analysis

KEYWORDS:
University extension; Information management; Emancipation; Information Science

RESUMO

Introdução:

A sociedade atual vem sendo identificada como Sociedade da Informação. As questões relacionadas à informação e ao seu fluxo são instigadas à sua compreensão e influência social, levando em consideração documentos, conteúdos e assuntos variados, comportamentos diversificados e pessoas usuárias, receptoras e reprodutoras de informação. A universidade tem o papel de contribuir na transformação, capacitação e conscientização social a partir da indissociabilidade entre ensino, pesquisa e extensão por impactar na formação pessoal e profissional da sociedade, no entanto, a pequena quantidade de publicação na ciência da informação, sobre a extensão universitária na comunidade em situação de vulnerabilidade social, nos provoca a interrogação sobre a relevância social do Programa de Extensão do Departamento de Ciência da Informação da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.

Objetivo:

Assim, por meio de análise sobre a extensão em ciência da informação, este artigo de pesquisa em andamento, tem o seguinte objetivo: refletir sobre a importância e relevância social da extensão realizada na comunidade em situação de vulnerabilidade social.

Metodologia:

Qualitativa com abordagem crítico interpretativo, em dois momentos distintos e conectados: a pesquisa bibliográfica, nesse estudo, e a pesquisa de campo na coleta de dados.

Resultados:

Evidencia-se a prática de extensão participativa onde, de maneira interdisciplinar e democrática, o distanciamento entre mundo acadêmico e comunidade de periferia, entre conhecimento científico e popular, pode ser menor através da extensão universitária em Ciência da Informação.

Conclusão:

Essas serão confirmadas ou não na conclusão da pesquisa de campo em andamento por meio de entrevistas e análise documental.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Extensão universitária; Gestão da informação; Emancipação; Ciência da Informação

1 INTRODUCTION

Contributing to the construction of solutions for the most serious social problems of the Brazilian population, through public policies, democratically formulated and that enable the protagonism and emancipation of people, passes through the primary function of the university from the connection between its three pillars: teaching, research, and extension.

The contemporary world is in a true Information Society; digitalized, connected, and virtual, moving towards a cybernetic, robotized, and artificially intelligent world in the simulation of the human being; however, the communities in situations of social vulnerability are deceived and manipulated with an excess of information, which, tied to the neoliberal market, are exclusionary. This cultural transformation process, according to Pedro Demo (2000), goes through the capitalist meanders full of competitiveness, as a form of social control, putting impoverished communities in a disadvantaged situation in the access to new technologies, although they correspond to the desires and market needs of consumption: "disinformation will be, therefore, a fundamental part of the information process." (DEMO, 2000, p. 39).

Faced with the post-modern appeal for innovative mercantilism knowledge, a scientific commitment by collectivity is necessary. Scientific knowledge needs to dialogue with the most distant, discriminated, and socially forgotten places, especially because they are located in the large urban pockets that provide labor for the maintenance of society. According to (HARARI, 2018, p. 47), in this information society, "in the long run, no activity will remain immune to automation. Even artists will receive notice". The university has a fundamental role in building, concentrating, and sharing knowledge through teaching, research, and extension. The strategies for operationalizing its role vary from place to place given the freedom of execution of its faculty, as long as they are tuned to the quality of teaching in line with the contemporary needs of society; producing and systematizing knowledge in a critical, creative and efficient way providing social impact; and providing service to the community with an investigative, formative and pedagogical character far from a mere assistentialism. (BRASIL, CNE/07/ 2018).

Given its capacity and mission to produce and disseminate knowledge, the university has the role of contributing to transformation and social empowerment. From the inseparability between its three pillars, teaching, research, and extension, (MINGHELLI, et al, 2021), the activities of the academic curriculum impact on personal and professional training of the subjects involved, both inside and outside the university physical space, provoking reflections, building knowledge, and promoting social inclusion in the technological and digital transformation that is currently happening. The strategies to prepare for scientific and technological advances have in universities important allies, as mediating institutions in the scientific and technological educational process. Research needs to grow and be qualified locally, nationally, and internationally, to contribute to an impact the emerging challenges, including thinking about the best way to make the transition to a more cybernetic world.

Article 207 of the Federal Constitution of 1988 states that universities must obey the "principle of inseparability between teaching, research and extension", where the teaching dimension is linked to the constructive and historical process of existing knowledge - the research dimension permeates the process of implementation and production of new knowledge - and the extension dimension puts into practice the social intervention as an educational and training process, from the social demand. SOUZA (apud LEITE, 2018).

The connecting relationship between the three dimensions when it is effective in the resolution of social demands in the community outside the university enables significant transformations to that territory. The function of connecting university and society to the promotion of knowledge cannot be confused with welfarism, and/or the provision of services, from the perspective of the reproduction of certain market and conservative views. "Despite the legal recognition of University Extension, it is essential to strengthening the practice of its curricularization, still seen as a marginalized element in universities," (FRUTUOSO; SILVA, 2021, p. 1), given its ability to reach with science in the most distant and vulnerable places of society, dialoguing with local culture without discriminating against it, enhancing training, information and citizen participation as subjects of social rights and duties

In this sense, it is important to pay attention to the challenge of overcoming these extension trends focused only on responding to goal 12.7 of the National Education Plan (PNE), producing a reciprocal relationship with the subjects involved, through actions guided by Resolution No. 7 MEC/CNE/CES, of December 18, 2018, that guides the extension Guidelines for higher education, as Frutuoso; Silva (2021) warns:

Even if the extension is inserted in the pillars of public universities, its modalities and axes must be fostered in the pedagogical projects of their respective courses, because of the benefits of visibility, integration, and social responsibility in the triad university, course, and society (FRUTUOSO; SILVA, 2021, p. 1).

Even with the possibilities of impactful and transformative social intervention in communities outside universities, university extension still has an inexpressible presence in impoverished communities with great social vulnerability. Even Information Science, which historically presents significant participation with librarianship and archiving, establishes inoperability - even now with the rise of technological tools, media, and new emerging professions - by not causing significant impacts on impoverished communities. The veracity of this statement goes through the absence of specific publications in the most used platforms for searching scientific production in Brazil, such as the Reference Database of Journal Articles in Information Science (BRAPCI).

Between the years 2017 and 2021, only eleven articles were published with themes about university extension carried out in the periphery community, so this study focuses on university extension carried out in a community in a situation of social vulnerability, externally to the physical space of the university. The small amount of publication in information science on the subject of university extension in communities in situations of social vulnerability provokes the interrogation about the social relevance of the Community Extension Program of the Department of Information Science of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (CIN/UFSC), entitled "Cyber-citizenship Program".

To analyze the production of knowledge developed through the Cyber-citizenship extension program, this study presents an analysis of university extension in information science and the social relevance of this program for society. To theoretically reference the reflection is dialogued with the literature on the social consequences of the meanderings of this Information Society, such as new professions, automation, new media technologies, Dataism, etc. from the conception of Yuval Noah Harari, (2018) and Pierre Lévy (2010); and still, for dealing with extension in partnership with popular education is considered the social and methodological reflection of Paulo Freire (2011 and 2019).

This is a study approved by an examining board in July 2022, for a master's dissertation in the Graduate Program in Information Science, at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in the research line Data, Intelligence, and Technology, scheduled for completion in March 2023.

1.1 University Extension and the Cyber-Citizenship Program

The organization of the educational process, historically, brings judicious and hierarchical intentions that determine the fragmented professionalization in social layers. The communities with great social vulnerability are victims of the manipulative process and creators of the culture of submission, low esteem, and among others the perception that the university world is not a right, but a place where rare people from impoverished communities can access. Even the most modern projects seeking to overcome this division implanted throughout centuries still reproduce this hierarchy, with great influence in Brazil of the slave society and Iberian culture. "This heritage brings a hierarchical stratification of knowledge combined with stratification of social classes." (MINGHELLI, 2018, p. 161). Currently, in times of globalization, in a period of great modernity and technological advances, the process of articulation for social inequality is still perceived, being strongly marked by the exclusion of rights, among them information and scientific knowledge accompanied by access to technologies. "The hardest question refers to the sometimes overt manipulative process that the information society imposes on us." (DEMO, 2000, p. 39).

More than anything, knowledge is ambivalent: it has always been our most decisive weapon for emancipation, but it is no less so for colonization. The current globalization process points in this direction in an ostensible way: what is most globalized are globalizing forms of discrimination. (DEMO, 2000, p. 37).

The university has in its premises a social and political mission in the construction and socialization of knowledge, constantly seeking autonomy for the implementation of the necessary directions to its role as a producer of science. In the relationship with the State, it follows the social, political, and economic transformations from its vocational tripod of teaching, research, and extension, where the primary dimensions permeate teaching and research as a social character. (INCROCCI; ANDRADE, 2018). Looking at the course of university extension in Brazil, it is clear that since its first official steps, in the early 1930s, its objectives are linked to the presence in the impoverished community, but most of the extension experiences happen inside the universities.

It is consolidated with the enactment of the First Statute of Brazilian Universities and Decree No. 19.851/31, art. 42 (Brazil, 1931), in which it is stated that "university extension will be effected through courses and conferences of an educational or utilitarian nature." (INCROCCI; ANDRADE, 2018, p. 192).

When we look at the trajectory of university extension, we realize that the preferential and mistaken option for the elite made the consolidation of the extension happen gradually until the strengthening of the student movement during the military coup, becoming considered a tool for political involvement of the university with society, The state took over the premises of the extension employing a welfare character and propagating a capitalist bias, emerging at the time, effected through the innovation policy with an emphasis on science and technology (S&T), where the focus was on productivity, competitiveness, and excellence controlled by performance indicators. Only in the 1980s, with the same theme of innovation, science, and technology, was it possible to resume the discussion on university extension, being institutionalized as a tool for civil participation in S&T. With the in-dissociability between research, teaching, and extension, the need for approximation, collective and reciprocal work between universities and communities is legitimized, creating in 1987, the Forum of Pro-Rectors of Extension of Brazilian Public Universities - (FORPROEX). (INCROCCI; ANDRADE, 2018).

Even with the various experiences with university extension projects that seek to approach communities in situations of social vulnerability, the number of publications on this theme, in information science, is reduced the others, enabling the questioning: why the literature presents a reduced number of publications of empirical experiences with and in the community itself, even with the legislations directing for its effectiveness?

This alienating exclusion produces a culture of incapacity through misinformation, especially in vulnerable communities, which have limited access to information, the internet, scientific knowledge, and to technologies beyond basic survival needs. Misinformation is part of exclusion from the informational world and involves different political, economic, and social agendas among Internet users and non-users. There is more talk about interaction through technology, the estrangement from the real world strengthening the virtual, and the alienation from reality.

The Cybercitizen ship Program has been developed since 2017 by the Department of Information Science of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (CIN/UFSC), in partnership with the Marist Social School Lucia Mayvorne - high school, in compliance with goal 12.7 of the National Education Plan, about the curricularization of university extension. Through the discipline Community Interaction I and II, to bring the subjects of this territory closer to the possibilities of technological informatization and knowledge to access the university world, meetings between university and high school students are held, through dynamics with rounds of conversation, sharing of experiences, training workshops, and coexistence both in the school territory and in the physical space of the university, enabling scientific, cultural and popular learning among all involved (MINGHELLI, M. et al., 2021).

In 2015, when starting high school at the Marist Social School Lucia Mayvorne, in the community Monte Serrat, Maciço do Morro da Cruz in Florianópolis - Santa Catarina, the dream of a higher professional degree, for the students, was of watchman for men and nursing assistant for women who thought "higher" because most visualized only cleaning services. Professions in the area of information technology did not pass through the possibilities of those, who were born in an impoverished community; and getting to a university was conceived only as a professional in the area of cleaning services, because, when it came to labor rights and workplace safety, it was considered a dream - that few were so lucky.

The University Extension Program Cybercitizen ship had its beginning in 2017, firming up in the following year, and has been rebuilding itself in the face of a participatory methodology causing significant curiosities and questions:

• What is the real impact on the local culture about the professional perception of rights and possibilities for this community that is at the center of three university campuses: Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC) and Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFSC). Is there any social change taking place?

• Are the professional possibilities in the area of Information Science and Technologies being recognized by high school students?

• Is there significance and relevance for the future professional performance of the university students participating in the discipline Community Interaction I and II?

Given the curiosities, doubts, and questions, there is a need to look at the literature and verify the importance given to university extension, in information science, through the scientific debate that is presented in the publications on the subject. It is necessary to reflect on the contemporary needs, in this information society, and observe/ critically analyze the social relevance of the Cybercitizen ship Program as a university extension.

2. CRITICAL INTERPRETIVE APPROACH

The basis of the dialogue in this study is the curricularization of university extension in information science, that is, it is the information and its relationship with society. It is developed in this chapter that the concept of information is considered important for the understanding of this study, from the perception of scholars who have dealt specifically with information with its meaning and social importance. As a bibliographic reference to the qualitative analytical reflection, a dialog with three contemporary thinkers is conducted: Yuval Noah Harari, Pierre Lévy, and Paulo Freire.

The problem addressed in the extension theme goes through the reality of communities in situations of social vulnerability and how scientific and technological knowledge of information can impact through university extension, with the possibility of cultural and social changes. The observation of the experience made by the Cybercitizen ship Program, its influences, and consequences, compared to the report of the subjects who went through the experience, are significant data for all involved in the process: university, school, students, and society.

The fact that I perceive myself in the world, with the world, and with others puts me in a position vis-à-vis the world that has nothing to do with it. After all, my presence in the world is not that of one who adapts to it, but of one who is part of it. (FREIRE, 2011, p. 53).

For Lévy (2010), at the end of the 20th century, new ways of thinking and living together were created, based on telecommunications and information technology, transforming human relations and social life. The current society has been identified as the "information society". This recognition has been confirmed with the emergence of information technology, which has become expressive due to its digital nature and occupies a prominent place in economic development in political performance with capital, labor, and their inputs, due to its increasingly constant global impact. "The new communication technologies (micro informatics, telematic networks) will amplify this media space" (LÉVY, 2010, p. 59). Even with the information that humanity would be on the road to equality, with globalization and the Internet, the society of the 21st century may become the most unequal in history, given the speed that cyberspace is expanding as a communication system. "Cyberspace allows unprecedented freedom of expression and communication on a planetary scale." (LÉVY, 2010, p. 52).

In the twentieth century, the mass audiovisual media create a new space of circulation of the public word, of engendering opinion through the constitution of a "media space", a place of further production of simulacrum and spectacularization of society. The control of emission (journalism's social function in defining what is of public interest) is fundamental to the emergence of the modern notion of citizenship. (LÉVY, 2010, p. 59).

It is inevitable to recognize that in the information society, there is a veneration for data, called Dataism. Dataism defines the universe as a stream of data, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing. Dataism sees the human being as a composition of organic organisms, sensations, and emotions, defined as algorithms. An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to perform calculations, solve problems, and make decisions. It considers human beings incapable of refining data to obtain information, knowledge, or wisdom, it conceives of humanity as functional, and from the moment that algorithms are developed with greater efficiency in the same function, human experiences will lose their value and will be replaced. It will be possible to replace drivers, lawyers, poets, and musicians, among others, with computer programs; the human and subjective experience may be discarded. (HARARI, 2018).

Scientific progress along with economic development fuels the pursuit of power. The power lies in the speed of data processing. Whoever can build or control more efficient data processing structures will have the power, whether human or not. Some believe that in up to 20 years billions of people will be irrelevant to the labor market, because machines and robotics will significantly change the professions that exist today and most working people, in the world, have no idea what the labor market will look like in 2050. (HARARI, 2018).

Certainly, globalization has benefited large segments of humanity, but there are signs of growing inequality, between and within societies. A few groups increasingly monopolize the fruits of globalization, while billions are left behind.(HARARI, 2018, p. 104).

From now on it is necessary to go beyond the realization that working people are considered irrelevant to the labor market and to think about investments in preparing people for the possibilities of change that are foreseen. University extension must be active in training, capacity building, and social awareness.

The experience of the Cybercitizen ship program can foment other transforming actions. The strategies to prepare for social advances must also go through the universities, as citizen educators. Research needs to grow and qualify to contribute and impact the new challenges to come, aware that the greatest power lies in the control of data that "will supplant both land and machinery as the most important asset, and politics will be the effort to control the flow of data." (HARARI, 2018, p. 107).

Dadaist dogma is likely the political and economic challenge and project of the 21st century. Even if Dataism is mistaken, it may take over the world as it spreads across all scientific disciplines and promises human aspirations. (HARARI, 2018). In favor of the media space the public spaces that promote the meeting between people, such as squares, streets, and cafes, are weakening while the media publicization of private space is increasing.

Still, a new global public sphere permeated by planetary citizenship is possible with new communication devices that use collaborative and communicational practices, enabling greater control and intervention for the sake of a more just and egalitarian society, but it is necessary to raise awareness for the use of information, (LÉVY, 2010), and here is, as an educational tool, the university extension in the community in situations of social vulnerability.

From a computer or a smartphone connected to the Internet, today we have the choice between all the radio, all the television, and all the newspapers available in the mass format. But that's not all. We also have the power of independent media such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, microblogs, and social software that offer information beyond the transposition of mass media. These new tools have an important political role because they emerge and develop from and through bottom-up processes, in conversation and collaboration. (LÉVY, 2010, p. 76).

The experience of the Cybercitizen ship program, as a social action of political participatory nature built through listening and intervention of the subjects during the process of the experience, where reflection about themselves and the world, allows the correlation with their reality, demonstrates learning situations and expand the field of perception between before and now. According to Paulo Freire (2022), the process of unveiling the social reality of oppression enables the overcoming of socially imposed myths and beliefs, allowing the subjects to react by consciously positioning themselves in the transformation of their reality, in favor of the common good.

Another knowledge that I cannot doubt for a moment in my educational-critical practice is that as a specifically human experience, education is a form of intervention in the world. Intervention that, beyond the knowledge of the contents well or badly taught and/or learned, implies both the effort to reproduce the dominant ideology and its unmasking. (FREIRE, 2011, p. 96).

University extension manages to reach with science the most distant and vulnerable places of society, dialoguing with the local culture without discriminating against it, but building knowledge in a democratic, participative, emancipating, and respectful way, as Paulo Freire warns: "nobody, in a democratic perspective, should teach what he knows without, on the one hand, knowing what he already knows and at what level those to whom he is going to teach what he knows". (FREIRE, 2011, p. 131). In this sense, this study uses the qualitative methodology to observe, analyze and systematically record the evidence presented during the research period.

3 METHODOLOGY

Aiming at the most appropriate way to achieve the proposed objectives, this is a qualitative study based on other experiences already conducted; it does not start from scratch. It seeks to understand and interpret the facts in the current context, from the territory where the interrelations with the subjects take place. "Even if exploratory, that is, of evaluation of an unknown concrete situation, someone or a group, somewhere, must have already done the same or similar research, or even complementary research on certain aspects of the intended research." (MARCONI; LAKATOS, 2021, p. 113).

The qualitative methodology:

It seeks interpretation instead of measurement, discovery instead of verification, and assumes that facts and values are closely related, making a neutral stance of the researcher unacceptable.

The qualitative approach advocates a holistic view of phenomena, i.e., one that considers all components of a situation in their interactions and reciprocal influences (ANDRÉ; GATTI, 2008, p. 03).

Qualitative research has the principles of phenomenology, characterizing qualitative methodology with a critical interpretive approach in the development of this study, with "special attention to the world of the subject and the meanings attributed by him/her to their daily experiences, to the social interactions that make it possible to understand and interpret reality, to the tacit knowledge and everyday practices that forge the conduct of social actors. (ANDRE; GATTI, 2008, p. 3).

Through a critical interpretative approach with reflective and systematic procedures in the discovery of data, relationships, and facts, before scientific treatment that allows finding answers to the theme of university extension in information science, the Cybercitizen ship Program, it is used the qualitative bibliographic research with a critical interpretative approach, highlighting the importance given to the theme of university extension in the community in situations of social vulnerability, and field research with the empirical investigation and qualitative approach through school document analysis and informal interviews with students and teachers involved in the Cybercitizen ship program.

It is based on these assumptions that the new research approach is configured, called qualitative because it opposes the quantitative science scheme, which divides reality into measurable units, studying them in isolation (ANDRÉ; GATTI, 2008, p. 3),

Data collection is a fundamental phase, "much more than seeking the truth; it is finding answers to proposed questions, using scientific procedures." (MARCONI AND LAKATOS, 2021, p. 31).

2.1 Data Collection

The data collection happens in three distinct moments, to understand, analyze and diagnose with greater veracity the relevance and importance of university extension in the community outside the university:

1. survey of publications in BRAPCI databases;

2. school diagnosis of high school students

3. interviews with students participating in the Cybercitizen ship Program.

Chart 1
Data Collection

WHERE	WHAT	HOW
A. BRAPCI Platform (Reference Database of Journal Articles in Information Science)	Mapping the number of publications on university extension between 2017 and 2021, considering: • thematic • related areas • place of realization.	Descriptors: • university extension • extensionist project • Community university extension.
B. School Documents at the Marist Social School Lucia Mayvorne	Diagnosis of the quantitative data: • concluding students • students enrolled in Enem and vestibular. • students with access to higher education • students with access to technical courses • manifestations of professional dreams (2017/18) and (2020/21).	Collect information in: • Class council minutes • Annual pedagogical report • Annual social report • Political Pedagogical Project • Others that the school deems pertinent.
3. Interviews with Students	To verify the actual status of the students who participated in the Cybercitizen ship Program: • ten students with access to higher education; • ten students with access to vocational courses and/or the labor market	Through an epistemological circle in a single meeting with three distinct moments: • large round • small groups • individual.

• Source: created by the author (2022)

To qualify the analysis of the knowledge production developed by the Cybercitizen ship Program, complementary information is included through semi-structured interviews with subjects involved in the program, between the years 2017 and 2021.

Chart 2
Coleta de Dados Complementares

Complementary Information	WHAT	HOW
	Interview with people involved in the Cybercitizen ship Program. • University students monitors. • Co-ordination of the Cybercitizen ship Program • The direction of the Marist Social School Lucia Mayvorne • Teacher at the Marist Social School Lucia Mayvorne	Through semi-structured interviews scheduled in person or virtually.

• Source: created by the author (2022)

Chart 3
Cronograma

When	What	Where/How
SEPT/2022	Collect quantitative data from publications about university extension in socially vulnerable communities.	On the BRAPCI Platforms
OCT/2022	Collect quantitative data regarding high school students who attended the school during the years 2017 to 2021.	School documents: Political Pedagogical Project and Reports.
NOV/2022	Qualitatively diagnose the current status of students who participated in the Cybercitizen ship Program between the years 2017 and 2021, from representativeness.	Interviews with students at the school
DEC/2022	Qualitative data analysis.	Theoretical and Practical Analysis
JAN/2022	Data Crossing and Systematization.	Analysis of results and systematization
FEB/2023	Writing the dissertation	1stChapter= analysis of the literature 2ndChapter= Information Science and extension 3rdChapter= epistemological circle: results
MAR/2023	Dissertation Presentation	Defense

• Source: created by the author (2022)

4 RESULTS

The extension can enable the inter-relationship with society through dialogic interaction as a two-way street: through the rescue of autonomy in its role as a subject of/in the history of its territory and society; in training for participation as a citizen of rights and duties; with events and campaigns on human rights and development of society; through scientific and technological initiation for intervention and participation in social phenomena; with the training of teachers and educators, among others. (FORPROEX, 2012).

University extension is possible the mediation between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge in a true integration that favors the problematization of certainties already established and the construction of new knowledge, adhering to the phenomenon of epistemology-pragmatics between university and society, with possibilities of results with great transformative impact on social reality and the university world of scientific production, as pointed out in objectives 1, 3 and 7 of the National Plan for University Extension referring to "problem-solving"; the "transdisciplinary relations between university and society"; and the "expansion of access to knowledge and technological and social development". (FORPROEX, 2012, p. 9). University extension actions are characterized by intervention in the community in a democratic and participatory manner in the search for the emancipation of people, through interdisciplinary projects of community organization.

The transformation of University Extension into an effective instrument of change of the university and society, towards social justice and the deepening of democracy, walks Pari passu with the facing of these challenges and the search for new opportunities that arise in the international context and the Brazilian reality. (FORPROEX, 2012, p. 18).

Information Science itself, for now, presents few actions aimed at community university extension, although its capacity to act is gigantic, especially in these times of the Information Society. Between the years 2017 and 2021 several articles were published on the BRAPCI platform, - a national reference in information science - and of these only a few dozen have the theme of university extension, and most of them were conducted within universities. Frutuoso and Silva (2021), point to the need for the presence of extension in courses for the realization of social responsibility of the triad "university, course, and society", unmasking the current neglect of university action with the most excluded social layer, especially in the current transitional moment that society is. The publications developed as university extensions carried out on university premises are extremely necessary and important for society, but they should be expanded in quantity and area of action, taking into account the current Information Society in which we find ourselves, where the directions point to an updating and emergence of numerous new functions for the maintenance and coexistence of society. To Harari (2018), society may reach the year 2050, with thousands of people being discarded in the labor market, due to the transformation of the economic system, for not having been prepared for the new work needs that are emerging.

Some believe that within a decade or two billions of people will be economically redundant. Others maintain that even in the long run automation will continue to generate new jobs and greater prosperity for all. (HARARI, 2018, p. 40).

The university extension can access the most distant and vulnerable places of society, dialoguing with the local culture, causing the emancipation, and empowering people for citizen participation as a subject of rights and duties. The small number of publications on university extension within communities in situations of social vulnerability, in the area of Information Science, reveals the need for the expansion and dissemination of studies on the importance of extension activities.

For society, it can be one more tool used to tackle social exclusion and strengthen communities through knowledge. The university, besides offering the existing courses in its curricula, can access communities deprived of various social rights through university extension. And Information Science is a crucial tool in this moment of transition.

Given the transdisciplinary aptitude of Information Science, its scope is gigantic and impactful, in other words, transformative. Access to information from an area that is fundamental to this Information Society, which is on the rise, is essential for social layers deprived of fundamental rights such as access to true information. For the people of this community, the fulfillment of dreams in higher education professionalization and the area of technology becomes closer.

Because it is a social action of a political and participatory nature, built through listening and intervention of the subjects during the process of the experience, where reflection about oneself and the world enables the correlation with one's reality, demonstrates learning situations, and expands the field of perception between the before and the now. "In the relations that man establishes with the world there is, for this very reason, a plurality in his singularity. And there is also a present note of criticality." (FREIRE, 2022, p. 56). Thus, the process of unveiling its reality enables the overcoming of myths and beliefs socially imposed, providing the opportunity for a conscious positioning toward the transformation of its reality, and in favor of the common good. Articulation between the academic community and the external community, through a relationship of equality of rights and duties, promotes a cultural and scientific educational process, which, reaching awareness, enables the transformation of the territory and society, including the academic world itself.

The connection that is established between these two poles is an exchange relationship, in which the university [...] offers subsidies for the intellectual development of the subjects, [...] the community contributes with its values and culture. (JESUS; GOMES, 2021, p. 03).

It is important to consider that university extension is part of a system engendered by bureaucracies that tend to limit its performance and expansion, making significant social transformations impossible. However, this structure is not fixed, but dynamic, moving historically from discussions, debates and dialogues held with the participation of the university, the State, the community, and various sectors of civil society.

Among the several experiences with university extension projects that seek to approach the periphery communities, one of them is developed by CIN/UFSC, to approach the subjects of this territory to the possibilities of technological informatization and knowledge for the access to the university world, demystify for these populations the impossibility of dreaming beyond subaltern services.

The Cybercitizen ship Extension Program starts with pre-determined actions and without dialogue with the community. However, by using a qualitative methodology, with a participative and democratic strategy of collective construction, it listens to the community and redesigns its course of action to three focuses: stimulate high school students to enter into Higher Education; provide content for studies through a virtual platform; go beyond the limits of the school walls through the possibility of entrepreneurship. (MINGHELLI, M. et al., 2021).

In an interdisciplinary and participatory way, the existing distance between the academic world and the peripheral community, between scientific knowledge and common sense, can be reduced through Information Science.

4 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Technological advances characterize an Information Society aimed both at the emancipation of subjects and at the manipulation that supports individualized interests, making it increasingly necessary "against all the force of the fatalistic neoliberal discourse, pragmatic and reactionary, I insist today, without idealistic deviations, on the need for conscientization." (FREIRE, 2011, p 54). In the middle of the 21st century, antidemocratic actions that exclude rights strongly resurface, making us reflect on the need to strengthen the pedagogical interventions used in educational spaces.

University extension is among the possibilities of intervention to raise awareness about citizen participation, demystifying for communities in situations of social vulnerability the impossibility of breaking the social situation they find themselves in, as Freire warns that "to the majorities, in difficulties even to survive, it is said that reality is just like that, that hunger is a fatality" (FREIRE, 2011, p. 99), and that the university, especially the public one, is for very few. The simple act of providing access with quality diminishes several barriers. The procedural frequency of opportunities, accesses, and possibilities of getting to know what is different, within it, can deconstruct common sense and generate the breaking of many cultural apartheids that often are not understood, only recognized and passed on from generation to generation.

The organization of the educational process historically brings judicious and hierarchical intentions that determine the fragmented professionalization in social layers. Even the most modern projects seeking to overcome this division implanted over centuries, with great influence, in Brazil, of the "slave society and Iberian culture", permeated by this heritage that reinforces the hierarchization of knowledge stratified into social classes. (MINGHELLI, 2018). The acquisition, construction, and socialization of scientific knowledge have always been the most decisive weapon for humanitarian emancipation, but it can also be colonizing. The current process of information globalization points in this direction, in the face of globalizing forms of discrimination by omitting, denying, and even transcribing scientific information. Social inequality is strongly marked by the exclusion of rights, among which are information, scientific knowledge, and access to technologies (DEMO, 2000).

Exclusion from the informational world goes through emancipatory ambiguity, evidenced in this information society, which involves different political, economic, and social agendas among Internet users and non-users. "The world has become a "little village," not so much because we see and communicate more easily, but because the lines of force have become so much more convergent." (DEMO, 2000, p. 38). More and more people are talking about interaction through technology, about the estrangement from the real world strengthening the virtual one, and about alienation from reality. This alienating exclusion produces a culture of incapacity through misinformation, especially in communities in situations of social vulnerability, which have limited access to information, the internet, scientific knowledge, to technologies beyond the basic needs of survival; they are victims of the manipulative process and creator of the culture of submission, of low esteem and, among others, of the perception that the university world is not a right, but a place where rare exceptions of impoverished communities can access.

Network connectivity and artificial intelligence can reduce the mortality rate, crime, and consequently even social inequalities if the end-product is guided by humanitarian interests and planetary sustainability; without economic goals in search of power and social control, because "if this system makes a mistake, the results can be catastrophic," by reaching instantly, the whole world. (HARARI, 2018, p. 45). The major focus is not on humans and planetary sustainability, but on maintaining social differences.

Each area must recognize its specific object in information; this is "disciplinary identity as a condition for effective dialogue with other disciplines," (KOBASHI; TÁLAMO 2003, p. 17), clarifying its interpretation beyond functionalist mechanics and its indecisions. More and more "the information, its nature, properties, production, circulation, and consumption, be it massive or directed to specific groups, has been transforming itself into an object of study of several disciplines", (KOBASHI; TÁLAMO, 2003, p. 10), and in face of its complexity, demanding a conceptual elaboration that enables socio-political-economic alternatives for the contemporary society of the century we are entering.

Several experiences with university extension projects seek to approach communities in situations of social vulnerability, through "dialogical interaction of the academic community with society through the exchange of knowledge, participation, and contact with complex contemporary issues present in the social context," (CNE/Nº7/2018, Art. 5, §I), in an attempt to reduce this gap. One of them has been developed by CIN/UFSC in the socially vulnerable community called Monte Serrat, located in the Maciço do Morro da Cruz, in the central region of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina: the Cybercitizen ship program.

The program starts with actions organized by the university staff and without the participation of the community, but by listening to them it redesigns its course. For CIN/UFSC there is evidence of the practice of participative extension, where in an interdisciplinary and democratic way, the existing distance between the academic world and the peripheral community, between scientific and popular knowledge, can be reduced through Information Science, providing significant social impact for the reduction of social inequality.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Apr 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  06 Dec 2022
• Accepted
  20 Jan 2023
• Published
  08 Feb 2023