Social informatics

"Social informatics is the study of information and communication tools in the context of culturology, or in the context of a specific institution. " (Wikipedia, 2006).

 

"Social informatics (SI) is the systematic, interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies (IT) that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. Thus, it is the study of the social aspects of computers, telecommunications, and related technologies, and examines issues such as the ways that IT shape organizational and social relations, or the ways in which social forces influence the

use and design of IT. For example, SI researchers are interested in questions about the future consequences of IT developments."   (Kling, 2003, p. 2656).

 

Literature:

 

Bishop, A. & Star, S. L. (1996). Social Informatics for Digital Libraries. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 31, 301-403.

 

Brown, J. S. & Duguid, P. (2000). The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

 

Karamuftuoglu, M. (1998). Collaborative Information Retrieval: Toward a Social Informatics View of IR Interaction. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49(12), 1070-1080.

 

Kling, R. (1999). What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter? D-Lib Magazine, 5(1),  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html

 

Kling, R. (2000). Learning about information technologies and social change: The contribution of social informatics. The Information Society, 16(3), 217-232.

 

Kling, R. (2001). Social informatics, Encyclopedia of LIS, Kluwer Publishing, Dordrecht, available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20030611191417/http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI/si2001.html  (Retrieved 2007-07-24).

 

Kling, R. (2003). Social informatics. In: Encyclopedia of library and information science. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc. (Pp. 2656-2661).

 

Kling, R.; Rosenbaum, H. & Hert, C. (1998). Social Informatics in Information Science: An Introduction. Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 49(12), 1047-1052. (See http://www.asis.org/Publications/JASIS/v49n1298.html).

 

Sawyer, S. and Rosenbaum, H. (2000). Social informatics in the information sciences: Current activities and emerging directions. [Electronic Version] Informing Science. 3(2), 89-95 available at http://www.inform.nu/Articles/Vol3/v3n2p89-96r.pdf

 

Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2006). Social informatics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_informatics

 

 

See also: Informatics; Information sociology.

 

 

 

 

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 30-07-2007

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