Information and Library Science

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The Evolution of Social Informatics Research (1984‐2013): Challenges and Opportunities
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014-01) Sanfilippo, M.; Fichman, P.
Social informatics (SI) is “the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technology that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts” (Kling 1998, p.52; 1999). SI provides flexible frameworks to explore complex and dynamic sociotechnical interactions. As a domain of study related largely by common vocabulary and conclusions, SI critically examines common conceptions of and expectations for technology, by providing contextual evidence. This chapter describes the evolution of SI research in the US and UK and identifies challenges and opportunities for future research. We divided SI research into four major periods: an early period of foundational work which grounds SI (Pre-1990s), a period of development and expansion (1990s), a robust period of coherence and influence by Rob Kling (2000-2005), and a period of diversification (2006-Present). Each of the four periods is divided into four sections: principles, concepts, approaches, and findings. Principles refer to the overarching motivations and labels employed to describe scholarly work. Approaches describe the theories, frameworks, and models employed in analysis, emphasizing the multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of SI. Concepts include specific processes, entities, themes, and elements of discourse within a given context, revealing a shared SI language surrounding change, complexity, consequences, and social elements of technology. Findings from seminal SI works illustrate growing insights over time and demonstrate how repeatable explanations unify SI. In the concluding remarks, we raise questions as to the possible future expansion or extinction of SI research.
Frameworks for understanding knowledge sharing in open online communities: Boundaries and boundary crossing
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014-01) Hara, N.; Fichman, P.
Earlier studies of Social Informatics aimed to understand Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in organizational context (Dutton 2005). In the 1970 and 1980s, ICTs were primarily developed for and used in organizations such as universities, corporations, and governments. As the price of computer devices decreased, more computers were found in private homes, and studies of personal computers were added to the corpus of SI studies (e.g., Hara and Kling 2000). Then, in the 1990s, as more and more people gained access to the Internet, SI researchers started focusing on Internet use in various settings (e.g., Kling 1996; Kling, Rosenbaum, and Sawyer 2005). In the early 21st century, there has been a surge in social media use, which has led to a wave of studies seeking insight into user relationships with social media and the consequences of these activities (e.g, Turkle 2011). In line with this trend this chapter calls for studies of knowledge sharing in the social media setting from an SI perspective.
Information Quality on Yahoo! Answers
(Idea Group Publishing, 2014) Fichman, P.
Along with the proliferation of the Social Web, Question and Answer (QA) sites attract millions of users around the globe. On these sites, users ask questions while others provide answers. These QA sites vary by their scope, size, and quality of answers; the most popular QA site is Yahoo! Answers. This chapter aims to examine the quality of information produced by the crowd on Yahoo! Answers, assuming that given enough eyeballs all questions can get good answers. Findings illustrate a process of answer quality improvement through crowdsourcing questions. Improvement is achieved by having multiple answers to any given question instead of a single answer, and through a mechanism of answer evaluation, by which users rank the best answer to any given question. Both processes contribute significantly to the quality of answers one can expect to find on Yahoo! Answers.
Introduction in Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2014-05) Fichman, P.; Hara, N.
Introduction in Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014-01) Fichman, P.; Rosenbaum, H.
This chapter is the introduction for Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future, a collection of twelve papers that provides a state-of-the-art review of 21st century social informatics. Two papers review the history of social informatics, and show that its intellectual roots can be found in the late 1970s and early ’80s and that it emerged in several different locations around the world before it coalesced in the US in the mid-1990s. The evolution of social informatics is described under four periods: foundational work, development and expansion, a robust period of coherence, and a period of diversification that continues today. Five papers provide a view of the breadth and depth of contemporary social informatics, demonstrating the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches that can be used. A further five papers explore the future of social informatics and offer provocative and disparate visions of its trajectory, ranging from arguments for a new philosophical grounding for social informatics, to calls for a social informatics based on practice thinking and materiality. This book presents a view of SI that emphasizes the core relationship among people, ICT and organizational and social life from a perspective that integrates aspects of social theory and demonstrates clearly that social informatics has never been a more necessary research endeavor than it is now.
Knowledge sharing on Wikipedia embassies.
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2014-05) Fichman, P.; Hara, N.
With the proliferation of the social web, online knowledge sharing across cultural boundaries has become a norm. For example, the English Wikipedia attracts users from all over the world, and much of Wikipedia is written in languages other than English. Intercultural collaboration occurs daily on Wikipedia with users from all over the world making valued contributions. Online intercultural collaboration on Wikipedia is intriguing but understudied, as the majority of research on Wikipedia is based on the English site with few exceptions. Existing cross-cultural research on Wikipedia includes comparative accounts of Wikipedia in multiple languages (e.g., Callahan and Herring 2011; Hara, Shachaf, and Hew 2010; Pfeil, Zaphiris, and Ang 2006; Stvilia, Al-Faraj, and Yi 2009) and case studies of Wikipedia in languages other than English (e.g., Han-Teng 2009; Shachaf and Hara 2010). More scholarly attention is needed in order to understand the ways in which the social web can mediate, facilitate, or hinder intercultural collaboration and how this, in turn, can influence knowledge sharing. The chapter aims to address this gap by identifying the style of interaction that characterizes global knowledge-sharing behaviors on Wikipedia as well as the topics that are posted by users from various countries on Wikimedia Embassies, which assist in cross-lingual projects. More broadly, the research we present here emphasizes a sociotechnical understanding of Wikipedia, and it is particularly informed by social informatics. Social informatics is "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses, and consequences of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts" (Kling, Rosenbaum, and Sawyer 2005, 6). As such, it illustrates the ways in which technology facilitates and mediates intercultural collaboration in an international context, and seeks to answer the question: How do users with diverse national and linguistic backgrounds engage in global, boundary-spanning activities online? The study also delineates how the technological infrastructure is appropriated for local and global use, and how activities on Wikimedia Embassies can enhance our understanding of Wikipedia at the local and global level. Wikimedia Embassies offer useful insights into how cultural and institutional contexts interact with each other and how such contexts influence online knowledge sharing.
Online Peace Movement Organizations: A Comparative Analysis
(IGI Global, 2008) Hara, Noriko; Shachaf, Pnina
The use of the Internet for civic engagement by the general public is becoming increasingly prevalent,yet research in this area is still sparse. More studies are particularly needed in the area of cross-cultural comparisons of online social movements or online peace movement organizations (PMOs). While it is possible that PMOs in diverse cultures differ in their collective action frames, it is unclear whether PMOs use collective action frames and, if so, how differently they are used. This chapter describes a comparative study that examined Web sites of PMOs in Japan and Israel. Collective action frame is used as a theoretical framework to analyze 17 Web sites, identifying the similarities and differences in the ways that online PMOs frame their activities. The findings indicate that these organizations employed various strategies to develop resonance, highlighting the importance of cultural resonance in framing online PMOs in different countries.
Online Social Movements
(Annual Review of Information Science & Technology, 2011) Hara, Noriko; Huang, Bi-Yun
The emergence of “e-movements” and new forms of “e-protest” and “e-activism” (Earl & Schussman, 2003) has signified the importance of the Internet as an organizational and mobilization vehicle for those engaged in social change. Social and political scientists have widely studied social movements for a number of years, including the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support these movements. Historically, technology has constructively influenced social movements; perhaps most compelling is the use of the printing press by European social movements in the late eighteenth century (Tarrow, 1998). With the press, social movement organizers were able to widely distribute their ideas and better coordinate their activities. More recently, radio, television, telephones, direct mailings, fax machines, and e-mails have commonly been used to disseminate information as well as mobilize critical mass (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Lievrouw, 2006; Porta & Diani, 1999). In a similar vein, the bundle of new ICTs associated with the Internet (e.g., websites, streaming videos, blogs, Voice-over-IP and social networking sites) hasassisted numerous contemporary social movements. For example, while traditionally so-called activists have been the primary participants in social movements, today general citizens who may not consider themselves activists are actively participating in online mobilization (e.g. Hara, 2008). Because of the wide use of the Internet, social movements are finding a way to reach the general public. It has been reported that some social movements have taken advantage of ICTs to reach wider audiences faster, with lower costs than traditional methods (Bennett, 2003). More recently, social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter played influential roles in political mobilization (Greengard, 2009; Gueorguieva, 2008). These technologies began to provide powerful means to organize forces—whether it is to fight against a prevailing corporation (Shirky, 2008) or to coordinate international protests (Pérez, 2008). Traditional social campaigns have resorted to activities like public demonstrations, street theater, sit-ins, and protests to wrestle with the power-holders or opponents. In contrast, the Internet has altered this dynamic by electronically advertising a movement’s views, goals, and tactics, publicizing the information of movement activities, serving as multiple resources, and linking like-minded individuals and groups transnationally. The rapid formation of global mobilizing forces and advocacy networks has attracted dozens of social activist groups (e.g., Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 2001; Gillan, 2009; Kahn & Kellner, 2004). In this chapter, we use the following definition of online social movements: “The term online social movements refers to the adoption and use by social movements and community activists of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet and the World Wide Web” (Loader, 2003, p. 1319, emphasis original). This includes both social movements that use ICTs as well as social movements that take place (exclusively) on the Internet. The literature on online social movements has grown to be recognized as a small but important area for research in information science and related fields due to the emerging roles of ICTs. Although this review makes no attempt to be comprehensive, it hopes to offer some insights into the literature of online social movements which are dispersed in various disciplines. The review of the literature in this chapter begins with the definition of social movements and introduces prominent theories used to study online social movements. Subsequently, overviews of discussions regarding ICTs’ influence on social movements are presented. Next, we focus on the following five uses of ICTs to facilitate social movements: ICTs as resources; ICTs to support collective identity; ICTs as framing devices; ICTs as mobilization tools; ICTs as spaces for social movements. Then, we discuss the opportunities and threats that online social movements provide, as well as how researchers began to explicitly theorize ICTs’ influence on social movements. Finally, possible future directions are introduced.
Page Charges and Article Length in Astronomy Journals
(Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2007) Dunn, Kathryn; Noel, Robert; Shaw, Debora
A study of 34 journals in astronomy and astrophysics looked at the relationship between journal page charges and the length of articles published. Although some writers contend that page charges encourage contributors to write shorter articles, there was no correlation between page charges and the length of articles published. American journals with relatively high impact factors were more likely to have page charges, but there was no overall correlation between impact factor and either page charges or article length.
Post-Memorial Exhibitions: A Design Approach to Negotiate Cultural Trauma
(School of Sciences and Humanities Research Institute, University of El Salvador, 2023) Martell, Allan A.
In this chapter I draw from the case of the armed conflict in El Salvador (1980-1992) to explore how museum exhibition design shaped the memories of the armed conflict of descendants of former war refugees. I report on the process of a participatory design workshop with seven youth and account for the role of the exhibition process in helping participants making sense of their feelings and beliefs associated with a conflict that partly shapes their lives even though these youth were born more than a decade after the Peace Accord. I refer to such design process and its outcomes as a post-memorial exhibition. Post-memorial exhibitions represent an addition to the methodological toolkit of scholars interested in working with memorial museums and sites as well as those interested in transitional justice. By creating a safe space where participants can engage cognitively and emotionally with the fragmented memories of their local, post-conflict context, post-memorial exhibitions can serve both as instruments of sense making and probes for intergenerational dialogue. Future work should also explore tweaking with the design process to promote critical thinking about the past, streamlining the design pipeline to mitigate attrition, and further investigating the role of play in making sense of social memories of violence among youth.
“Quivering Web of Living Thought”: Conceptual Networks in Swinburne’s Songs of the Springtides
(Ashgate, 2010) Walsh, John A.
Team effectiveness in virtual environments: An ecological approach
(Idea Group Publishing, 2005) Shachaf, P.; Hara, N.
This chapter attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness and outlines an ecological theoretical framework that is applicable to virtual learning environments (VLE). Prior empirical studies on virtual team effectiveness used frameworks of traditional team effectiveness and mainly followed Hackman’s normative model (input-process-output). We propose an ecological approach for virtual team effectiveness that accounts for team boundaries management, technologyuse, and external environment in VLE, properties which were previously either nonexistent or contextual. The ecological framework suggests that three components — external environment, internal environment, and boundary management — reciprocally interact with effectiveness. The significance of the proposed framework is a holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team. Furthermore, we address the needs for new pedagogical approaches in VLE.

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