Elements of social science engagement in information infrastructure design

ABSTRACT

Drawing on three cases of information infrastructure building projects with social science participants, we identify four elements which have structured the engagements. The elements we identify are (i) the temporal initiation of social science engagement with the project; (ii) the level of development of the infrastructure at engagement, (iii) the project's participatory model for social science, and; (iv) social scientist's structured relations to project participants.

REFERENCES

• 1: Baker, K. S., Ecological Design: An Interdisciplinary, Interactive Participation Process in an Information Environment. in Proceedings of the Workshop on Requirements Capture for Collaboration in e-Science, January 14--15, (Edinburgh, 2004), 5--7.
• 2: Jane E. Fountain, Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, Brookings Institution Press, 2001
• 3: Jackson, S. J. and Baker, K. S. Ecological Design, Collaborative Care, and Ocean Informatics. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference, Toronto.
• 4: Kling, R. What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter? D-Lib Magazine, 5 (1). 1--23.
• 5: David Ribes , Karen S. Baker , Florence Millerand , Geoffrey C. Bowker, Comparative interoperability project: configurations of community, technology, organization, Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, June 07-11, 2005, Denver, CO, USA [doi>10.1145/1065385.1065399]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.3 Organizational Impacts
          Subjects: Computer-supported collaborative work

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Management

Keywords:
CSCW, collaboration methodology, data interoperability, ethnography, infrastructure, organization, science and technology studies, social science