The difficulty of interdisciplinary narratives
This post is also cross posted on heatherwiltse.me. Interdisciplinarity is a concept that is frequently lauded but notoriously challenging to realize. Practical realities like publication and tenure...
View ArticleThe Internet and Censorship of Sobriety Checkpoint Locations
In 2010, drunk driving accounted for nearly a third of all traffic related deaths.[1] In an effort to deter drunk driving, police departments around the country started implementing sobriety...
View ArticleOntology of Students in Interdisciplinary Programs
I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy for Heather’s posting. I thought it would be more interesting if we have the following discussions. For me, the difficulty of interdisciplinary studies...
View ArticleWe’re back… and with new brilliant minds!
Hello all! After a nice summer break, the Social Informatics Blog is back, and we bring great news! Lynn Dombrowski and Shad Gross is joining our team of core authors! We are very excited to have them...
View ArticleQualifying exam revelation: A new methodological genre emerging(?)
If we’re lucky, one of the many little triumphs we get to celebrate in graduate school is passing our qualifying exams. A few weeks ago my committee declared me ABD. Weeks after the exam defense, I...
View ArticleAn Afternoon Exploring Tivoli: the construction of cameras, tourists, and...
During my short stay in Copenhagen last week I visited Tivoli, the world’s second oldest theme park. I am a big fan of Disney theme parks, though I would not necessarily consider myself a fan of theme...
View ArticleCalling into question design’s ability to solve problems: a quick look at...
In academia, we often talk about technology becoming increasingly pervasive (or ubiquitous) in daily life, referring to technologies moving beyond the personal computer and present in multiple...
View ArticleThe Ethics of Design in Increasingly Complex Situations: The Case of a Broken...
Designers tend to approach ideas from a certain bias, which may require some explanation. While design is focused on the process of creating artifacts, it is rarely a straightforward endeavor. Of...
View ArticleOn Building Social Robustness and Enduring Computing
As many of you know, I am now directing a Social Informatics (SI) Group in a School of Informatics and Computing (SoIC) at Indiana University Bloomington. The SI group is quite unique in...
View ArticleDigital Divide Research: one myth, problem and challenge.
The Myth: Digital Divide has a small literature. Pretty much, almost every book or paper on the topic will say this. I used to believe that not enough work has been done on Digital Divide, until I...
View ArticleThe Amish: Making the most of life at the margins
In our field of study, many of us want to know how technologies can be used for the social good. As professional academics (someday), we may wear cloaks of scientific objectivity, but deep down, many...
View ArticleOf rituals and technology
I have always enjoyed fixing computers. This is not because of the challenges that are presented by the process of computer repair (although there is a certain amount of enjoyment to be found there as...
View ArticleDigital Divide Research as a Practice of Big Data
Big Data seems to be the new buzzword of the moment and the solution to all of society’s problems. Often we hear people coming up with studies involving a great amount of data aggregated from Twitter,...
View ArticleJust hanging out: challenges in transmediated ethnography
Questions about the practice of ethnographic research, both as a method and as an analytic way of knowing, have been a focus of my dissertation work. The new Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A...
View ArticleSocial Informatics: The Basis for Informatics Systems Implementation in...
By Grant Webb Many people don’t automatically think of the human element when they think of technology, but people and technology can’t help but influence each other. This mutual influence, which forms...
View ArticleArt, Video Games, and Research
During the last year of my undergraduate education, I (Shad) encountered my first experience of the video games are(n’t) Art debate. While there was certainly a lot of passion surrounding the argument,...
View Article2014 is finally here for the Social Informatics Blog!
Hello After a nice winter break, the Social Informatics Blog is back, and we bring great news: we have new brilliant brains among us! Padma Chirumamilla, Ammar Halabi, Paula Mate, Philip Reed and...
View ArticleA Technological Deterministic Crash: The case of the flight MH370
On Saturday March 8th, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 departed at 12:41 a.m. local time and was due to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. on the same day. The flight was carrying 227 passengers and 12...
View ArticleImpossible (?) Expectations of Overlap between Different Types of Mediated...
Ubiquitous participation in an inescapably digital society has led to well established norms of mediated interactions and socially mutual expectations for mediated environments, in terms of factors...
View Article“Neverland” or “networked publics”? : A review of “It’s complicated: The...
A few months ago, I started collecting data for my Ph.D dissertation. Since I study interpersonal and group behavior in multiplayer online games, I got quite involved in the online forums of my studied...
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