Social informatics as a concept: Widening the discourse

Abstract

This contribution examines the different concepts known as social informatics that have historically been separate. The paradigm that is preferred worldwide (based on Kling) is well described and often promoted, with a strong base both in the USA and Europe. This article, however, introduces lesser-known paradigms (based on Sokolov and later Ursul) that originated in the era of the USSR and have so far been employed chiefly in post-Soviet countries, including Russia. These paradigms have been neglected in English-written scientific literature, mainly because of the limited number of articles available in English. Other approaches are also introduced and related, which were historically named or classified as social informatics (American, British, Norwegian, Slovenian, German and Japanese). The present article introduces and further discusses the origin, historical development and basic methodological grounding of these approaches. All the approaches are then discussed and their differences as well as their similarities are pointed out. The aim is to create connections across the current generation of researchers, which includes the formation and conceptualization of different approaches and an exploration of possible areas for future cooperation.

Social Informatics Research: Schools of Thought, Methodological Basis, and Thematic Conceptualization

“…In addition, they have different standards for understanding science, and their articles are indexed in specific citation databases, which is also perhaps why they ignore journals indexed, for instance, in WoS. It would be fruitful to overcome these limitations and establish a perspective that takes into account all the known approaches to SI (Smutny, 2016;Takazawa, 2017). In part, this is already undertaken in bibliographic databases, such as WoS, which increasingly include publications from eLibrary.ru, J-Stage, and other regional databases.…”

“…In addition, there is perhaps no SI research that could not also be classified under the label of some alternative research stream. Within this context, to identify the potential thematic areas where SI research can appear, the classification (Vehovar, 2006) already discussed in the literature (for example, Smutny, 2016;Marcinkowski, 2016;Petric & Atanasova, 2013;Fuchs, 2008, pp. 1-10) is updated and refined.…”

The Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Managing High Arctic Tourism Sites: A Collective Action Perspective

“…To understand the function of ICT in collective action, social informatics [26,27,50,51], which can be defined as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts" [52] (p. 688), offers some inspiration. In social informatics, ICT is seen as embedded in complex and dynamic social, cultural, organizational and institutional structures [53,54], and a sociotechnical network concept can be applied to understand the function ICT assumes in the actions of an organization [50,55].…”

The Emergence and Historical Development of Informatics and Computing Disciplines in Selected European Countries and the USA

“…166). Oficiálním důvodem pro vyčlenění vědeckých a technických informací z knihovnictví a bibliografie bylo zefektivnění práce s těmito informacemi, kde tradiční bibliografické metody již nepostačovaly (Smutný, 2016). Tímto vyčleněním vznikly později vedle knihoven také tzv.…”

“…Zatímco ve Francii a Německu byla informatika přijata a ukotvena již na konci 60. let 20. století, další státy se přidávaly postupně v následujících desetiletích (Smutný, 2016). Kupříkladu v Norsku se pojem informatika v širokém slova smyslu používá běžně již v 80. letech 20. století, avšak ve Švédsku se pojem informatika oficiálně ukotvuje až v polovině 90. let 20. století (Dahlbom, 1996), kdy nahrazuje starší švédské názvy pro oblast informačních systémů 40 .…”