Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: Working on the fringes

By bringing together science studies, information science and ethnographic fieldwork in interdisciplinary research the author argues for the relevance of ethnographic practices when studying information systems as infrastructures of communication. Ethnographic fieldwork focuses attention on fringes and materialities of infrastructures and renders the researcher able to read the invisible layers of control and access, to understand the changes in the social orderings that are brought about by information technology. Numerous examples and personal accounts of studies of infrastructures with ethnographic tools show how paying analytical attention to mundane aspects of information infrastructures helps to understand the consequences of the imbrication of infrastructure and human organization

The Community Informatics of an Aging Society: A Comparative Case Study of Public Libraries and Senior Centers

As the global population ages, and as digital technologies become ever more densely woven into the fabric of everyday life, the localized social support older adults rely on to maintain digital literacy will increase in importance. While many older adults struggle to learn digital technologies for the first time in their lives, a growing number of older adults have learned some digital technologies, and have access to some digital equipment. This growing population struggles with maintaining and extending digital literacy. The roles of the family in supporting older adult digital literacy has begun to receive scholarship. Less well understood are the extra-familial, community-based social supports older adults rely on. The hypothesis of this study is that maintaining and growing digital literacy in older adulthood requires ongoing social support at the level of the local community. This study’s research question is “How and to what extent does community-based information infrastructure support older adult digital literacy?” To analyze this topic, I used the tools of participant observation and interviewing to study the community-based, primarily publicly-funded information infrastructure that in the United States of America serves older adults’ social, recreational, and informational needs: senior centers and public libraries. This research focused on three public libraries and three senior centers in a specific geographical community in order to empirically analyze the roles these institutions play in supporting older adult digital literacy. Analysis of the data collected illustrates how digital literacy is acquired and maintained in old age. Older adults well connected to diverse sources of support in their communities are better able to maintain and grow digital literacy than those that lack this support. Structural obstacles impact these processes. The pressures of needing a job and needing to take care of one’s family in old age lead to different paths towards digital literacy for the poorer older adults that participated in this study. Findings also illustrate the challenges and successes of community-based information infrastructure. Providing opportunities for older adults to share their experiences learning digital technologies created a community of learners, which enabled older adults to support one another in their projects to maintain digital literacy. Senior centers and public libraries play important roles in ensuring older adults stay digitally engaged, and thus remain active members of the information society. This study’s findings show how communities grapple with the challenges and opportunities of community informatics in our aging society. This poster won an an honorable mention award at the the Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition.Ope

Infrastructuring Geographies: Histories and Presents in and of the Middle East and North Africa

The 10th issue of Middle East – Topics and Arguments engages with infrastructure studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. It presents different empirical cases and theoretical discussions that take infrastructural formations and their effects both to the center stage and as the analytical focus. In this editorial, we first discuss two epistemic locations from which infrastructure can be studied. Then, we highlight the featured authors and the way each of them make compelling cases through the lenses of material and social infrastructures in different MENA contexts. In light of these, we argue that infrastructures, as the material conditions of modern human life, have shaped and continue to shape geographical constructs of the Middle East and North Africa. Lastly, we call for further social and historical research to investigate how infrastructural systems as material and symbolic networks of imperial expansion and exploitation have contributed to the geographical and political entities that make up the construct called MENA

Factors impacting the low usage of e-services in Latvia

Despite the availability and technological flexibility of many pubic e-services in Latvia provided by both public and private organizations, users do not choose to use those services as frequently as their developers might wish. There are several possible causes for that: (1) e-services eventually do not meet users’ needs, (2) users have socio-cognitive barriers discouraging them from using e-services. These barriers can be related to technological problems (such as data security) or cognitive factors (such as fear of making mistakes in virtual environments lacking direct human interaction). The aim of the current research was to find out, which e-services users prefer and why, on the contrary, they do not choose to use some e-services. Further we wanted to explore what are the possible factors impacting this behaviour. To answer those questions, a large-scale representative (n = 1005) survey was used to collect data on how users perceive the information that is gained from various digital sources and what are their habits and choices of using information and communication technologies (ICT). The results of the research indicate some core habits of using ICT in e-service environments, reasons of the reluctance regarding the usage of e-services, and provide some clues for facilitating the usage of e-services. Our results indicate that the reason of hesitation to use e-services is data security and inconvenient and complicated interface system. In our study, we also discuss the differences between the general use of the internet and the use of e-services.peer-reviewe

Some things I tend to overlap even if not necessary. A discussion on PIM artifacts between researcher and research agent

The spread of mobile communications and IT artifacts in general, gives rise to a pervasive number of mobile working modalities, inducing transformations in social practices and organizational environments in a networked society. In order to design information systems we need to understand how information artifacts are used to get work done, and how these support work, inside and outside the organizations. By drawing on personal information management studies, information needs, and information-related myths, we built a qualitative study to uncover artifacts used to cross different information spaces, by different individuals, in different working contexts, over three years. The present case follows an approach built by researcher and research agent, across different information spaces, where we confronted the existing body of knowledge with empirical data collected. The first results show that permanent reconfigurations of working spaces beyond organizational boundaries are supported by deliberate mixes of information artifacts, that seem to be determined by familiarity with place, anticipation of needs, type of transportation used, distance and time covered, and access issues

Tensions and paradoxes in electronic patient record research: a systematic literature review using the meta-narrative method

Background: The extensive and rapidly expanding research literature on electronic patient records (EPRs) presents challenges to systematic reviewers. This literature is heterogeneous and at times conflicting, not least because it covers multiple research traditions with different underlying philosophical assumptions and methodological approaches. Aim: To map, interpret and critique the range of concepts, theories, methods and empirical findings on EPRs, with a particular emphasis on the implementation and use of EPR systems. Method: Using the meta-narrative method of systematic review, and applying search strategies that took us beyond the Medline-indexed literature, we identified over 500 full-text sources. We used ‘conflicting’ findings to address higher-order questions about how the EPR and its implementation were differently conceptualised and studied by different communities of researchers. Main findings: Our final synthesis included 24 previous systematic reviews and 94 additional primary studies, most of the latter from outside the biomedical literature. A number of tensions were evident, particularly in relation to: [1] the EPR (‘container’ or ‘itinerary’); [2] the EPR user (‘information-processer’ or ‘member of socio-technical network’); [3] organizational context (‘the setting within which the EPR is implemented’ or ‘the EPR-in-use’); [4] clinical work (‘decision-making’ or ‘situated practice’); [5] the process of change (‘the logic of determinism’ or ‘the logic of opposition’); [6] implementation success (‘objectively defined’ or ‘socially negotiated’); and [7] complexity and scale (‘the bigger the better’ or ‘small is beautiful’). Findings suggest that integration of EPRs will always require human work to re-contextualize knowledge for different uses; that whilst secondary work (audit, research, billing) may be made more efficient by the EPR, primary clinical work may be made less efficient; that paper, far from being technologically obsolete, currently offers greater ecological flexibility than most forms of electronic record; and that smaller systems may sometimes be more efficient and effective than larger ones. Conclusions: The tensions and paradoxes revealed in this study extend and challenge previous reviews and suggest that the evidence base for some EPR programs is more limited than is often assumed. We offer this paper as a preliminary contribution to a much-needed debate on this evidence and its implications, and suggest avenues for new research

Pensar infraestructuralmente

Ensayo celebratorio de la publicación del libro de Mongili, A. y Pellegrino, G., eds., 2014. Information Infrastructure(s): Boundaries, Ecologies, Multiplicity. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars

The Dynamics of Boundary Objects, Social Infastructures and Social Identities

This paper takes a dynamic approach to understanding the nature and role of boundary objects by examining them in relation to the social infrastructures within which they are embedded and to the social identities of the groups that share them. We present a case study that describes the introduction of 3D modelling technologies into the AEC industry and the changes that consequently occurred. Based on the case study we suggest that boundary objects are used not only as a translation device, but also as a resource to form and express social identities. We further suggest the occurrence of a dynamic process whereby changes in boundary objects enable changes in social infrastructures and social identities in one group. These changes, in turn, create the conditions for change in bordering groups through shared boundary objects and boundary practices

Caring About the Plumbing: On the Importance of Architectures in Social Studies of (Peer-to-Peer) Technology

International audienceThis article discusses the relevance, for scholars working on social studies of network media, of "caring about the plumbing" (to paraphrase Bricklin, 2001), i.e., addressing elements of application architecture and design as an integral part of their subject of study. In particular, by discussing peer-to-peer (P2P) systems as a technical networking model and a dynamic of social interaction that are inextricably intertwined, the article introduces how the perspective outlined above is particularly useful to adopt when studying a promising area of innovation: that of "alternative" or "legitimate" (Verma, 2004) applications of P2P networks to search engines, social networks, video streaming and other Internet-based services. The article seeks to show how the Internet's current trajectories of innovation increasingly suggest that particular forms of architectural distribution and decentralization (or their lack), impact specific procedures, practices and uses. Architectures should be understood an "alternative way of influencing economic systems" (van Schewick, 2010), indeed, the very fabric of user behavior and interaction. Most notably, the P2P "alternative" to Internet-based services shows how the status of every Internet user as a consumer, a sharer, a producer and possibly a manager of digital content is informed by, and shapes in return, the technical structure and organization of the services (s)he has access to: their mandatory passage points, places of storage and trade, required intersections. In conclusion, this article is a call to study the technical architecture of networking applications as a "relational property" (Star & Ruhleder, 1996), and integral part of human organization. It suggests that such an approach provides an added value to the study of those communities, groups and practices that, by leveraging socio-technical dynamics of distribution, decentralization, collaboration and peer production, are currently questioning more traditional or institutionalized models of content creation, search and sharing