Social Informatics

"This volume is a valuable entry point for students and other new to SI researchers as they engage the key issues, phenomena, and intellectual puzzles that have long been the concern of Social Informatics. At the same time, the chapters challenge scholars familiar with and working in Social Informatics to think bigger, broader, and deeper about the interplay of technology, people, and society. By facilitating the development of new thinkers and challenging the assumptions of...
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"This volume is a valuable entry point for students and other new to SI researchers as they engage the key issues, phenomena, and intellectual puzzles that have long been the concern of Social Informatics. At the same time, the chapters challenge scholars familiar with and working in Social Informatics to think bigger, broader, and deeper about the interplay of technology, people, and society. By facilitating the development of new thinkers and challenging the assumptions of established thought, the authors chart a strong, achievable direction for the future of Social Informatics." Dr Brian Butler, Associate Professor, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland "The editors have orchestrated a purposive sample of authorial voices whose points of view collectively demonstrate the vigor and range of scholarship in social informatics. In this volume, students and scholars alike will find both harmonies and creative cacophony in this emerging field." Dr Gary Marchionini, Dean and Cary C. Boshamer Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "The term 'social informatics' has partially fallen out of favor, especially since the untimely death in 2003 of its chief advocate, Rob Kling. However, with the increased capabilities of information and computing technologies and their continued rapid diffusion, it is more important than ever to study information and information technologies in their social context. This interesting collection of essays takes a critical examination of the roots of social information, describes in a way that nobody else has done how social informatics has had numerous intellectual offshoots over the past ten years, and presents various competing visions of the future of social informatics. This book has important things to say to STS scholars, sociologists, historians, and technologists, as well as to those who regard themselves as social informaticists." Dr William Aspray, Bill and Lewis Suit Professor of Information Technologies, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin "This is an important and interesting text that will appeal to both novice and established researchers whose work is concerned with exploring the relationships between people and technologies in communities, ICT design, and ICT use. The editors have brought together an impressive selection of papers that enhances our understanding of the impact of computerization in our work and 'social' lives, and informs the social informatics research community of future possible research directions. With its analyses of the deep roots of social informatics by domain experts and accounts of more recent research by doctoral students, this text is bound to become essential reading within the social informatics community, and beyond." Dr Hazel Hall, Professor of Social Informatics and Director of the Centre for Social Informatics, Edinburgh Napier University