Working Papers (RKCSI)

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/147

The RKCSI Working Paper Series provides a venue for social informatics researchers to publish their works for distribution to a wide audience. Works may be submitted before or in lieu of publication in a formal journal.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 50

Academic Rewards for Scholarly Research Communication via Electronic Publishing
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Spector, Lisa
Arenas of Innovation: Fringe Groups and the Discovery of New Liberties Of Action
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2000) Sawhney, Harmeet; Lee, Seungwhan
The accuracy of our forecasts about a new communication technology depend on our ability to detect new "liberties of action" it offers. We, however, are unable to recognize them because we tend to view the new technology via metaphors based on old ones. Furthermore, the entrenched institutions seek to guide its development within the existing framework with minimal disruptions. Within this context, the breakthroughs which shatter our conceptual blinders come from the activities of fringe groups fueled by the thrill of experimentation rather than the prospect of commercial gain. For example, while corporations (RCA, Westinghouse, AT&T and others) interested in point-to-point wireless telegraphy viewed the scattering of radio waves as a nuisance, amateur radio enthusiasts saw the potential of point-to-multipoint broadcasting. Similarly, the activities of fringe groups were critical in the development of e-mail and internet broadcasting. This paper explains how the fringe groups form an "arena of innovation" outside the established institutional framework which facilitates the discovery of new liberties of action. It first examines the development of radio, e-mail, and internet broadcasting to identify parallels and then conceptualizes the processes via which fringe groups discover the new liberties of action of an emerging communication technology.
A Bit More To IT: Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Kling, Rob; McKim, Geoffrey; King, Adam
In this article, we examine the conceptual models that help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences, pre-print servers, field-wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first present and document the information processing model that is implicitly advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications -- the “Standard Model.” Then we present an alternative model, a model that considers information technologies as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs). STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability of these forums within a field than does the Standard Model. We illustrate the significance of the STIN model with examples of scholarly communication forums drawn from the fields of high energy physics, molecular biology, and information systems.
Bits of Cities: Utopian Visions and Social Power in Placed-Based and Electronic Communities
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1996) Kling, Rob; Lamb, Roberta
Conceiving IT-Enabled Organizational Change
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1998) Kling, Rob; Tillquist, John
Management models of IT-enabled organizational change like business process re-engineering, networking organizations, and complementary IT-to-business strategies, circulate broadly through the academic literature and popular business press. But h ow do these models carried within the management discourse influence the praxis of strategic planning? This study examines a strategic planning process as it is shaped by a popular IT-enabled change model. We found that popular cultural models of IT-ena bled change shape the organizational planning process by defining the mode of participant expression and pre-defining taken-for-granted assumptions of work and work organization. Our data show how models of IT-enabled change facilitate sense-making. We di fferentiate between socially-rich and socially-thin models, and argue that the latter, linked to popularized conceptions of management carried in the practitioner literature, are especially problematic for organizational participants and can undermine eff ective organizational action.
The Controversies over Data Mining and Warrantless Searches in the Wake of September 11
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2008) Hart, Jeffrey A.
In 2004, the Congress voted to end funding for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) data mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA) that was supposed to be used for preventing terrorist attacks. Because this was not the only data mining project established by the U.S. government after September 11, this paper examines the likely impact of the TIA cancellation on future efforts. It summarizes the controversy over warrantless wiretaps in the more recent past and then turns to the broader question of the tradeoffs between privacy and security.
Creating Social Spaces to Facilitate Reflective Learning On-Line
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Robbin, Alice
Critical Professional Education about Information and Communications Technologies and Social Life
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob
Looking back over the 1990s, it is easy to see the widespread troubles of many ventures that depended upon advanced IT applications, including business process reengineering projects, enterprise systems, knowledge management projects, online distance education courses, and famously -- some of the dot-com businesses of the 1990s. These "troubles" vary from substantial underperformance (ie. projects that were much more costly and/or produced much less social or business value than most of the participating IT professionals anticipated) and many outright failures. Many of these 'troubles" could have been avoided (or at least ameliorated) if the participating IT professionals had much more reliable and critical understanding of the relationships between IT configurations, socio-technical interventions, social behavior of other participants in different roles, and the dynamics of organizational and social change. Social Informatics is the name for the field that studies and theorizes this topic, and I will discuss it in more detail below. The key issue addressed in this paper is who will produce social informatics research for IT professionals, and where will they learn about important findings, theories, design approaches, etc.? The paper examines the record of computer science in the U.S. as a major contributor to the relevant research and teaching. It also examines the possibilities for new kinds of academic programs -- sometimes called “information schools” and "IT Schools" -- that are being developed to expand beyond the self-imposed boundaries of computer science and to integrate some organizational and social research as sites for social informatics.
Deconstructing the Digital Divide in the United States: An Interpretive Policy Analytic Perspective
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Courtright, Christina; Robbin, Alice
Democracy in the Age of the Internet: An Analysis of the Net Neutrality Debate of 2006
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2007) Hart, Jeffrey
In 2006, a major telecommunications bill failed because it did not include guarantees for something called “net neutrality.” The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the politics behind the net neutrality debate of 2006 and to predict its likely future course.
Digital Libraries and the Practices of Scholarly Communication
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Kling, Rob; Covi, Lisa
Digital Shift or Digital Drift?: Conceptualizing Transitions From Paper Media to Electronic Publishing and Digital Libraries in North American Universities
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Covi, Lisa; Kling, Rob
Earths Largest Library -- Panacea or Anathema? A Socio-Technical Analysis
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2000) Napier, Mark E.; Smith, Kathleen A.
Ecological approach to virtual team effectiveness
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Shachaf, Pnina; Hara, Noriko
This paper attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness, and outlines an ecological theoretical framework. 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, technology use, and external environment, properties which were previously either non-existent 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 the holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team.
Electronic Journals, the Internet, and Scholarly Communication
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Kling, Rob; Callahan, Ewa
Formal and Informal Learning: Incorporating Communities of Practice into Professional Development
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Hara, Noriko
The field of professional training has a long tradition of supporting learning and performance through formal training. This paper raises questions about the focus on formal learning and proposes a new way of incorporating communities of practice into professional development. Communities of practice are informal networks that support a group of practitioners in developing a shared meaning and engaging in knowledge building among the members. The purposes of this paper are to describe informal and formal learning found in organizations and to discuss the implications of informal and formal learning in communities of practice for general professional development.
From Users to Social Actors: Reconceptualizing Socially Rich Interaction Through Information and Communication Technology
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Lamb, Roberta; Kling, Rob
A concept of "the user" is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence people’s selections of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic “user” concept are limited. In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this “user” concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize "the user" as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily “users” of ICTs. Moreover, such socially thin and somewhat pejorative conceptualizations limit our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from "the user" concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting and using information systems.
Gender and Power in Online Communication
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Herring, Susan
Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Socio-technical Approach
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Courtright, Christina
How Public is the Web?: Robots, Access, and Scholarly Communication
(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1998) Snyder, Herbert; Rosenbaum, Howard
This paper examines the use of "Robot Exclusion Protocol" to restrict the access of search engine robots to 10 major American university websites belonging to institutions recently named among "AmericaÕs Most Wired" universities (Gan, 1997). An analysis of web site searching and interviews with web server administrators at these sites shows that the decision to use this procedure is largely technical and is typically made by the web server administrator. The implications of this decision for openness in scholarly communication and for the future of academic, university-based web publishing are discussed.

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