Social Informatics (ITM 604)

Summary

Social informatics is a concept that identifies study related to information systems and its socio-economic impacts. This paper has been prepared to use different research works that were developed to understand the importance of Social informatics and its impacts over different industries. The first portion of this paper gives brief definitions taken from previous research works. Second portion gives the importance of Social informatics and ICT (Information and Communication technologies) over organizations. The last part of this paper has highlighted those industries that are still experiencing problems to cope up with IT systems. All the discussions are taken from authentic resources. However, readers can use references for further guidance.

Social Informatics

Introduction

Social informatics is a useful working concept that recognizes a body of study which inspects the social characteristics of digitalization. Rob Kling (1999) defines it as “the versatile study of the uses, consequences and design of IT that include their interaction with cultural and institutional contexts”. SI (Social Informatics) is defined by its own subject rather by the methods, much as gerontology or urban studies. For more than twenty five years, it has been a critical topic for researchers. Analysts have proposed many findings and theories that are critical for the design, operation, and development of Information Systems, including intranets, e- libraries, e-forums and e-journals.

However, research is divided in to many topics of many fields including information systems, social sciences and computer studies. The reason is that each of these subjects requires different nomenclature. This variation of terminologies and communication outlet makes it difficult for non-experts to access the studies. That is why a new term was formulated as “Social Informatics” so that non-experts can easily locate these studies and even experts can use this term to communicate with each other. This paper has identified some important thoughts extracted from different SI researches and concludes with the importance of this concept in organizations.

Discussions

Defining Social Informatics

For last twenty five years, many researchers have been publishing articles on the social impacts of computerization over the social and cultural contexts. However, few of them defined Social Informatics as:

• Sawyer S. (2005), “Analyzing the impacts of communication and information tools in institutional or cultural contexts is Social Informatics”.

• Rob Kling (1999) defines it as “the versatile study of the uses, consequences and design of IT that include their interaction with cultural and institutional contexts”.

• Rosenbaum H. (2000) described SI as a transdisciplinary field which is a branch of socio-economic research. He further stated that, it examines those methods in which human-social context and technological artifacts mutually make ICT (Communications and information technology) as a whole.

• RKCSI (Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2013), “SI is not only limited to the study and research which investigates the social impacts of digitalization, but it also consists of the role of IT in organizational and social transformations, those methods which can bring a change in social-economic development and its applications in organizations”.

Strengths And Weaknesses Of Social Informatics ...