Tuesday, August 02, 2005
ASIS&T Bulletin June/July 2005: Steve Sawyer:
"Social Informatics: Overview, Principles and Opportunities
by Steve Sawyer
Social informatics is the term that I and others use to represent the trans-disciplinary study of the design, deployment and uses of information and communication technologies (ICT) that account for their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts, including organizations and society. This research is done by scholars in fields such as library and information science, information technology, education, communications, organizational studies, sociology, information systems and computer science. Those pursuing social informatics engage a diverse set of topics and employ a variety of approaches.
Social informatics has been characterized by many names including the social analysis of computing, human-centered computing, social studies of information technology and the sociology of computing. No matter the label, social informatics provides insights on computing that alternative approaches do not. For example, the rapid growth of socialware networking applications such as Friendster and Linkedin cannot be understood solely as computational artifacts, mediated communication tools, useful and useable interfaces or as electronic exchange markets. Rather, the variations in engaging and using these socialware networking applications reflect a complex interaction of technological and social factors, including social communication norms, group communication expectations, perceived cost and value of communication and the presence or absence of other communication tools. This more complex, situated, multi-level, multi-effect and socio-technical perspective is the added value of social informatics..."
"Social Informatics: Overview, Principles and Opportunities
by Steve Sawyer
Social informatics is the term that I and others use to represent the trans-disciplinary study of the design, deployment and uses of information and communication technologies (ICT) that account for their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts, including organizations and society. This research is done by scholars in fields such as library and information science, information technology, education, communications, organizational studies, sociology, information systems and computer science. Those pursuing social informatics engage a diverse set of topics and employ a variety of approaches.
Social informatics has been characterized by many names including the social analysis of computing, human-centered computing, social studies of information technology and the sociology of computing. No matter the label, social informatics provides insights on computing that alternative approaches do not. For example, the rapid growth of socialware networking applications such as Friendster and Linkedin cannot be understood solely as computational artifacts, mediated communication tools, useful and useable interfaces or as electronic exchange markets. Rather, the variations in engaging and using these socialware networking applications reflect a complex interaction of technological and social factors, including social communication norms, group communication expectations, perceived cost and value of communication and the presence or absence of other communication tools. This more complex, situated, multi-level, multi-effect and socio-technical perspective is the added value of social informatics..."
Comments:
Post a Comment
