Search (6 results, page 1 of 1)

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 58(2007) no.1, S.151-152 (R. Gazan): "Anyone who has ever struggled to describe social informatics to a skeptical colleague or a room full of students will appreciate this clear and well-organized introduction to the field. It is at once a literature review, a teaching guide, and an outreach manifesto for integrating the social aspects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into system design, analysis, and research. The context of this book is of particular importance. Rob Kling founded social informatics as a research field, and led the creation of the Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University. Kling pinpoints 1996 as the year when his long-simmering ideas coalesced into social informatics, though in the Foreword, William H. Dutton argues that the birth date of the field was actually more than a decade earlier. Kling, Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer worked on this book intermittently for years, but upon Kling's death in May 2003, Rosenbaum and Sawyer completed the work. Under the circumstances, the book could easily have become a festschrift or celebration of Kling's career, but the authors maintain tight focus on the findings and applicability of social informatics research throughout. While much of Kling's work is cited, and very little of it critiqued, overall there is a good balance and synthesis of diverse approaches to social informatics research. Creating a conceptual critical mass around an idea like social informatics is only the first phase in its evolution. The initial working definition of social informatics-"the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of ICTs that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts" (p. 6)-was developed at a seminal 1997 workshop, and background information about the workshop's participants and process is summarized in two brief appendices. The results of this workshop yielded a raft of empirical studies, and at this point in the development of social informatics, the authors' focus on applying and extending the results of these initial studies is particularly well-timed. The authors identify a disconnect between popular, professional, and scholarly discourse on how ICTs coevolve with organizations, institutions, and society, and they aim to bridge this gap by providing a "pointer to the practical value of the scholarship on organizational and societal effects of computerization" (p. 3).
The opening chapter provides a 10-page introduction to social informatics and identifies three high-level subdomains of the field: the normative, analytical, and critical orientations. Chapter 2 then narrows the focus to the social, technical, and institutional nature and consequences of ICTs, and provides a well-chosen review and analysis of social informatics research, mostly case studies of system implementations gone wrong. The recurring finding in these cases is that the social and institutional context of the system implementation was not sufficiently accounted for. In light of these concrete examples, the value and applicability of a social informatics perspective becomes clear. The chapters are organized exceptionally well, with bullet points and tables summarizing core ideas. One particularly good example of the organization of ideas is a table comparing designer-centric and social design views on the task of designing ICTs for workplaces (p. 42). Included are the different views of work, intended goals, design assumptions, and technological choices inherent in each design philosophy. Readers can immediately grasp how a social informatics perspective, as opposed to the more traditional designer-centric perspective, would result in significant differences in the design of workplace ICTs. The chapter titled, "Social Informatics for Designers, Developers, and Implementers of ICT Based Systems," provides an extremely focused introduction to the importance of social informatics for system builders, with more examples of large-scale system breakdowns resulting from failure to account for context, such as the 1988 destruction of a civilian passenger jet in the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes. However, many of the chapter subheadings have promising titles such as "ICTs Rarely Cause Social Transformations" (p. 28), and though the findings of several studies that reach this conclusion are reviewed, this section is but a page in length and no dissenting findings are mentioned; this seems insufficient support for such a substantial claim. Throughout the book, conclusions from different studies are effectively juxtaposed and summarized to create a sense of a cohesive body of social informatics research findings, which are expressed in a very accessible manner. At the same time, the findings are discussed in relation to their applicability to diverse audiences outside the social informatics field: system designers and developers, ICT policy analysts, teachers of technical curricula, and ICT professionals. Anticipating and addressing the concerns of such a diverse group of audiences outside the field of social informatics is an admirable but overly ambitious goal to achieve in a 153-page book (not counting the excellent glossary, references, and appendices). For example, the chapter on social informatics for ICT policy analysts includes approximately twenty pages of ICT policy history in the U.S. and Europe, which seems a luxury in such a small volume. Though it is unquestionably relevant material, it does not fit well with the rest of the book and might be more effective as a stand-alone chapter for an information policy course, perhaps used in tandem with the introduction.
In the authors' view, the primary means to more widespread acceptance of social informatics is to integrate it with the more traditionally technical curricula of ICT oriented students in computer science and related fields, and this is the focus of Chapter 5. Here the book delivers on its promise of providing a clear framework for both understanding and teaching social informatics. The goal is not simply to learn how to build systems, but to learn how to build systems that account for the context in which they are used. The authors prescribe field experience problem-driven learning techniques embedded in the needs of particular organizations, and a critical, reflexive orientation toward ICT design and construction. In a chapter endnote, the authors mention that a socia informatics perspective would also be useful to students in other fields such as communication and education, but that space limitations required a focus on computer science. Though an understandable choice, if the goal is to convince those outside the field of the value of a social informatics perspective, it would seem natural to include management or economics curricula as fertile ground to analyze some of the tangible effects of a failure to account for the social context of system implementations. Chapter 6 is something of an outreach manifesto, a treatise on communicating social informatics research to professional and research communities, and an explicit call for social informatics researchers "to shoulder the responsibility for communicating the core of social informatics . . . to ICT professionals and other research communities" (pp. 106-107). The authors are not shy about framing social informatics less as a research field and more as an up-and-coming competitor in the marketplace of ICT-oriented ideas; achieving more widespread acceptance of social informatics is presented almost as a sales and marketing challenge, the goal being "getting to yes" in the minds of ICT professionals. It is an effective presentation strategy, but one that comes with a cost.
Throughout the book, the authors portray social informatics research as being underutilized and misunderstood outside the field, and they should be commended for acknowledging and addressing these problems head-on. Yes, there is resistance from ICT professionals and faculty and students in technical disciplines, most of whom have not been trained to consider social and institutional issues as part of their work. However, this stance sometimes results in a defensive tone. Social informatics research is repeatedly described as "systematic," "rigorous," and "empirically anchored," as if in preemptive response to doubts about the seriousness of social informatics scholarship. Chapter titles such as "Perceptions of the Relevance of Social Informatics Research" and "Raising the Profile of Social Informatics Research" contribute to this impression. Nonscholarly observers are dismissed as "pundits," and students who lack a social informatics perspective have "typically naïve" conceptualizations (p. 100). The concluding chapter ends not with a powerful and memorable synthesis, but with a final plea: "Taking Social Informatics Seriously." The content of the book is strong enough to stand on its own, but the manner in which it is presented sometimes detracts from the message. The book's few weaknesses can be viewed simply as the price of attempting both to survey social informatics research findings and to articulate their importance for such a diverse set of audiences, in such a brief volume. The central tension of the book, and the field of social informatics as a whole, is that on the one hand the particular-use context of an ICT is of critical importance, but furthering a social informatics agenda requires that some context-independent findings and tools be made evident to those outside the field. Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics is an important and worthwhile contribution toward reconciling this tension, and translating social informatics research findings into better real-world systems."

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Footnote

Rez. in: JASIST 58(2007) no.1, S.150-151 (L. Westbrook): "The purpose of this volume is to bring together various analyses by international scholars of the social and cultural impact of information technology on individuals and societies (preface, n.p.). It grew from the First International Conference on Human Perspectives in the Internet Society held in Cadiz, Spain, in 2004. The editors and contributors have addressed an impressive array of significant issues with rigorous research and insightful analysis although the resulting volume does suffer from the usual unevenness in depth and content that affects books based on conference proceedings. Although the $256 price is prohibitive for many individual scholars, the effort to obtain a library edition for perusal regarding particular areas of interest is likely to prove worthwhile. Unlike many international conferences that are able to attract scholars from only a handful of nations, this genuinely diverse conference included research conducted in Australia, Beijing, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, England, Fiji, Germany, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States. The expense of a conference format and governmental travel restrictions may have precluded greater inclusion of the work being done to develop information technology for use in nonindustrialized nations in support of economic, social justice, and political movements. Although the cultural variants among these nations preclude direct cross-cultural comparisons, many papers carefully provide sufficient background information to make basic conceptual transfers possible. A great strength of the work is the unusual combination of academic disciplines that contributes substantially to the depth of many individual papers, particularly when they are read within the larger context of the entire volume. Although complete professional affiliations are not universally available, the authors who did name their affiliation come from widely divergent disciplines including accounting, business administration, architecture, business computing, communication, computing, economics, educational technology, environmental management, experimental psychology, gender research in computer science, geography, human work sciences, humanistic informatics, industrial engineering, information management, informatics in transport and telecommunications, information science, information technology, management, mathematics, organizational behavior, pedagogy, psychology, telemedicine, and women's education. This is all to the good, but the lack of representation from departments of women's studies, gender studies, and library studies certainly limits the breadth and depth of the perspectives provided.
The editorial and peer review processes appear to be slightly spotty in application. All of the 55 papers are in English but a few of them are in such need of basic editing that they are almost incomprehensible in sections. Consider, for example, the following: "So, the meaning of region where we are studying on, should be discovered and then affect on the final plan" (p. 346). The collection shows a strong array of methodological approaches including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies; however, a few of the research efforts exhibit fundamental design flaws. Consider, for example, the study that "set[s] out to show that nurses as care-givers find it difficult to transfer any previously acquired technological skills into their work based on technology needs (p. 187). After studying 39 female and 6 male nurses, this study finds, not surprisingly, exactly what it "set out" to find. Rather than noting the limitations of sample size and data gathering techniques, the paper firmly concludes that nurses can be technologists "only in areas of technology that support their primary role as carers" (p. 188). Finally, some of the papers do not report on original research but are competent, if brief, summaries of theories or concepts that are covered in equal depth elsewhere. For example, a three-page summary of "the major personality and learning theories" (p. 3) is useful but lacks the intellectual depth or insight needed to contribute substantially to the field. These problems with composition, methodological rigor, and theoretical depth are not uncommon in papers designed for a broadly defined conference theme. The authors may have been writing for an in-person audience and anticipating thoughtful postpresentation discussions; they probably had no idea of the heavy price tag put on their work. The editors, however, might have kept that $256 in mind and exercised a heavier editorial hand. Perhaps the publisher could have paid for a careful subject indexing of the work as a substantive addition to the author index provided. The complexity of the subject domains included in the volume certainly merits careful indexing.
The volume is organized into 13 sections, each of which contains between two and eight conference papers. As with most conferences, the papers do not cover the issues in each section with equal weight or depth but the editors have grouped papers into reasonable patterns. Section 1 covers "understanding online behavior" with eight papers on problems such as e-learning attitudes, the neuropsychology of HCI, Japanese blogger motivation, and the dividing line between computer addiction and high engagement. Sections 2 (personality and computer attitudes), 3 (cyber interactions), and 4 (new interaction methods) each contain only two papers on topics such as helmet-mounted displays, online energy audits, and the use of ICT in family life. Sections 6, 7, and 8 focus on gender issues with papers on career development, the computer literacy of Malaysian women, mentoring, gaming, and faculty job satisfaction. Sections 9 and 10 move to a broader examination of cyber society and its diversity concerns with papers on cultural identity, virtual architecture, economic growth's impact on culture, and Iranian development impediments. Section 11's two articles on advertising might well have been merged with those of section 13's ebusiness. Section 12 addressed education with papers on topics such as computer-assisted homework, assessment, and Web-based learning. It would have been useful to introduce each section with a brief definition of the theme, summaries of the major contributions of the authors, and analyses of the gaps that might be addressed in future conferences. Despite the aforementioned concerns, this volume does provide a uniquely rich array of technological analyses embedded in social context. An examination of recent works in related areas finds nothing that is this complex culturally or that has such diversity of disciplines. Cultural Production in a Digital Age (Klinenberg, 2005), Perspectives and Policies on ICT in Society (Berleur & Avgerou, 2005), and Social, Ethical, and Policy Implications of Information Technology (Brennan & Johnson, 2004) address various aspects of the society/Internet intersection but this volume is unique in its coverage of psychology, gender, and culture issues in cyberspace. The lip service often given to global concerns and the value of interdisciplinary analysis of intransigent social problems seldom develop into a genuine willingness to listen to unfamiliar research paradigms. Academic silos and cultural islands need conferences like this one-willing to take on the risk of examining the large questions in an intellectually open space. Editorial and methodological concerns notwithstanding, this volume merits review and, where appropriate, careful consideration across disciplines."

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Date

22. 6.2023 18:25:18

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Abstract

In Digital Methods, Richard Rogers proposes a methodological outlook for social and cultural scholarly research on the Web that seeks to move Internet research beyond the study of online culture. It is not a toolkit for Internet research, or operating instructions for a software package; it deals with broader questions. How can we study social media to learn something about society rather than about social media use? How can hyperlinks reveal not just the value of a Web site but the politics of association? Rogers proposes repurposing Web-native techniques for research into cultural change and societal conditions. We can learn to reapply such "methods of the medium" as crawling and crowd sourcing, PageRank and similar algorithms, tag clouds and other visualizations; we can learn how they handle hits, likes, tags, date stamps, and other Web-native objects. By "thinking along" with devices and the objects they handle, digital research methods can follow the evolving methods of the medium. Rogers uses this new methodological outlook to examine the findings of inquiries into 9/11 search results, the recognition of climate change skeptics by climate-change-related Web sites, the events surrounding the Srebrenica massacre according to Dutch, Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian Wikipedias, presidential candidates' social media "friends," and the censorship of the Iranian Web. With Digital Methods, Rogers introduces a new vision and method for Internet research and at the same time applies them to the Web's objects of study, from tiny particles (hyperlinks) to large masses (social media).

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Abstract

An original methodological framework for approaching the archived web, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right. As life continues to move online, the web becomes increasingly important as a source for understanding the past. But historians have yet to formulate a methodology for approaching the archived web as a source of study. How should the history of the present be written? In this book, Niels Brügger offers an original methodological framework for approaching the web of the past, both as a source and as an object of study in its own right. While many studies of the web focus solely on its use and users, Brügger approaches the archived web as a semiotic, textual system in order to offer the first book-length treatment of its scholarly use. While the various forms of the archived web can challenge researchers' interactions with it, they also present a range of possibilities for interpretation. The Archived Web identifies characteristics of the online web that are significant now for scholars, investigates how the online web became the archived web, and explores how the particular digitality of the archived web can affect a historian's research process. Brügger offers suggestions for how to translate traditional historiographic methods for the study of the archived web, focusing on provenance, creating an overview of the archived material, evaluating versions, and citing the material. The Archived Web lays the foundations for doing web history in the digital age, offering important and timely guidance for today's media scholars and tomorrow's historians.

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Footnote

In Chapter 5, the "Election Issue Tracker" is introduced. The Election Issue Tracker calculates currency that is defined as "frequency of mentions of the issue terms per newspaper and across newspapers" in the three major national newspapers. The Election Issue Tracker is used to study which issues resonate with the press and which do not. As one would expect, Rogers found that not all issues that are considered important or central to a political party resonate with the press. This book contains a wealth of information that can be accessed by both researcher and practitioner. Even more interesting is the fact that researchers from a wide assortment of disciplines, from political science to information science and even communication studies, will appreciate the research and insights put forth by Rogers. Concepts presented in each chapter are thoroughly described using a wide variety of cases. Albeit all the cases are of a European flavor, mainly Dutch, they are interesting and thought-provoking. I found the descriptions of Rogers various information instruments to be very interesting. Researchers can gain from an examination of these instruments as it points to an interesting method for studying activities and behaviors on the Internet. In addition, each chapter has adequate illustrations and the bibliography is comprehensive. This book will make for an ideal supplementary text for graduate courses in information science, communication and media studies, and even political science. Like all books, however, this book had its share of shortcomings. While I was able to appreciate the content of the book, and certainly commend Rogers for studying an issue of immense significance, I found the book to be very difficult to read and parse through. The book is laden with jargon, political statements, and even has several instances of deficient writing. The book also lacked a sense of structure, and this affected the presentation of Rogers' material. I would have also hoped to see some recommendations by Rogers in terms of how should researchers further the ideas he has put forth. Areas of future research, methods for studying future problems, and even insights on what the future might hold for information politics were not given enough attention in the book; in my opinion, this was a major shortcoming. Overall, I commend Rogers for putting forth a very informative book on the issues of information politics on the Web. Information politics, especially when delivered on the communication technologies such as the Web, is going to play a vital role in our societies for a long time to come. Debates will range from the politics of how information is searched for and displayed on the Web to how the Web is used to manipulate or politicize information to meet the agendas of various entities. Richard Rogers' book will be of the seminal and foundational readings on the topic for any curious minds that want to explore these issues."