Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics: A Framework for Studying and Teaching the Human Contexts of Information and Communication Technologies (review)

Social informatics is an interdisciplinary, empirical approach to understanding the design, uses, and consequences of information and communication technologies within a social context. The term is a catch-all for research conducted over the past three decades in a variety of fields that have used different language to describe their contributions. The authors of this volume, all academics with extensive publications in the field, argue that this research needs to be pulled together, communicated, and infused into the curriculum and into policy decisions. To make this claim, the book sets out to define the field, make the case for its importance, discuss how it could be incorporated into the curriculum and into policy decisions, and strategize a means of having it accepted as core knowledge. The impetus for this book was a 1997 workshop at Indiana University, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, at which over 20 specialists participated in laying out the shape of this newly-named discipline. (Rob Kling, who played a particularly significant role in defining social informatics as an area of study, died in 2003 before this book could be completed.)

The topic is an important one for academics and librarians. The two most interesting chapters of the book explore how information technologies affect organizations and social life and how social informatics can aid policy analysts. The examples provided of social informatics at work are more interesting and persuasive than the rest of the book, which focuses on how to embed the discipline more firmly in institutions and policies. Other books that discuss the social nature of information in greater depth include The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000) and The Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper (Cambridge: MIT, 2002). The purpose of this book is different: to lay out the domain of the discipline and to argue for its systematic infusion into higher education and policy decision-making. But unfortunately, apart from the two chapters mentioned previously, the book preaches to a choir that it has already argued is too small. Had the authors provided a deeper analysis of what research in the field has told us—and what we should do with that knowledge—it would be more useful to a wider audience, while proving the value of this field.

Librarians in particular will be dismayed that libraries, as a nexus of social life and information resources, are barely mentioned. The only reference in the index to libraries (specifically to "library policies") leads to a single, inaccurate statement about the controversy over Internet filters: "Librarians must balance community opinions of decency against patron's first amendment rights to access indecent materials at public computers in local libraries." (p. 22) This is, of course, blatantly wrong. Indecent speech is not protected by librarians—or the Constitution. The objection to filters is that they block speech that is not indecent.

Nevertheless, the concept of social informatics is a compelling one for libraries, and the inclusion of its principles in designing information systems makes a great deal of sense. Though this book provides a broad-brush introduction to the field, its lack of an in-depth examination of its findings and their significance in favor of a less compelling emphasis on how it should be taught and communicated ultimately limits its usefulness.