Socioinformatics

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Socio computer science is a young branch of computer science that the interaction between social groups investigated and software systems and develops design principles and implementation methods for software with large groups of users. To do this, she uses methods from computer science, sociology , economics and psychology .

overview

Socioinformatics sees itself as an interdisciplinary and design-oriented science and uses its own novel methodical approaches, concepts and procedures to solve socially relevant problems, such as design case studies , integrated organizational and technical development , business ethnography, end user development , infrastructure and appropriation activities. The discipline researches how existing and new social communication processes can be supported by software systems and what effects result from this. For example, she is interested in:

Socio-informatics research combines three different, but interacting topic complexes:

  • Research into new computerized communication media, mechanisms and processes;
  • Development of new engineering methods and techniques for software that implements networking and comprehensive functionality for large user groups;
  • Analysis methods, on the one hand to examine the impact of software systems on society, on the other hand to be able to better understand the reaction of social groups to software systems, such as B. Adjustment problems to newly introduced software in companies in the area of change management or population protests against research projects that should make information from social networks available to Schufa .

Development of the discipline socio-informatics

At the end of the 1990s, the discussion about the ever more intensive penetration of the living environment with information and communication technology increased in the social and economic sciences. In particular, the social aspects of increasing computerization moved into the focus of researchers such as Manuel Castells, George Dyson or James Cortada. They pursued an interactionist approach to technology analysis, that is, they examined the importance of ICT applications for social and organizational change, as well as, conversely, the influence of social forces and social practices on the design of information technologies. Rob Kling, Professor of Information Systems and Information Science at the University of Indiana and a pioneer in this new field of research, defined in his paper What is social informatics and why does it matter? the research program of social informatics as "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts".

In Germany, almost simultaneously in 2000, researchers from the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen and the Fraunhofer Society in Sankt Augustin founded the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI) , based in Bonn. At the Chair of Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen there is an interdisciplinary team of scientists under the leadership of the chair holder Volker Wulf , which is intensively involved in researching the meaning and design of ICT for the world of work, household and leisure time. Computer science further developed. The goal is defined to be "to design new types of applications with suitable methods so that their appropriation by users can have an ecological, prosperous, justifiable and socially integrative effect". A new discipline of socio-informatics was established in order to examine social aspects of computerization that are not or only insufficiently considered in other applied informatics disciplines (business informatics, health informatics, bio-informatics, etc.).

Basically, historical influences for the establishment of socio-informatics in Europe can be named: the approach of socio- technical systems , the Scandinavian tradition of participatory design , research and intervention methods of action research and the German discourse on informatics and society (IuG).

Research background

Social processes are fundamentally dependent on effective communication . Communication between individuals and social groups is essential to convey information, form opinions, build trust, develop common plans and solutions, work together, trade in goods and services, and make decisions.

Computer-aided communication can make these processes considerably easier and expand them to large, global user groups. This creates new types of communication, even between people who do not know each other personally. In addition, the information transmitted in communication can be stored, searched, aggregated and analyzed in a way that has never been seen before. Software can also help find suitable communication partners, provide further information for decision-making and allow completely new types of information to be linked.

Overall, socio-technical systems arise with sometimes very large, structured user groups on the one hand and software with intelligent information systems on the other, which develop in a co-evolutionary manner in mutual influencing and can also show emergent phenomena. While the basic functionality of the software is planned, the co-evolution of the socio-technical system follows the rules of complex systems , so that neither the exact requirements for the creation of the software are known nor any innovative types of use of the software can be easily predicted. The speed of evolution depends in particular on whether users, as so-called prosumers, are enabled to actively intervene in the database or the software design.

Challenges of Socially Embedded Software

From a software perspective, socioinformatics deals with the investigation and implementation of distributed information and communication systems that support existing or new societal and social processes of different user groups or even enable them in the first place. As mentioned above, these can be planning, work, administrative, economic, gaming or political processes. We call software systems with this characteristic socially embedded. The development of socially embedded software brings with it specific challenges, namely:

Requirements analysis

The particular challenges in the requirements analysis for socially embedded software are that the processes of many user groups and clients have to be taken into account, that the decision-making powers and goals of these groups are often not clarified and that existing and heterogeneous processes and legacy systems have to be integrated. What makes it much more difficult is that it is no longer enough to look directly at a single device, but that the interaction between people and systems must correspond to the user's ideas across the entire communication process.

Validation

The quality of social software depends not only on the classic functional and non-functional properties, but often even more on how well the social processes are supported and to what extent the software reacts to changes and new requirements. For example, a central quality feature of an ERP system is the extent to which it can map the specific work processes of the companies in which it is used and how easily it can be adapted in the event of changes. This is exacerbated for collaborative platforms, where the guidelines of who is allowed to change what when and how consensus can be achieved often play a much greater role in success than classic software quality characteristics. How such evolutionary systems are to be validated, tested and maintained are typical questions in socio-informatics.

An interesting proposal to address the outlined challenges in requirements analysis and validation, but also to provide a basis for design decisions, are so-called design case studies, which explicitly include user acceptance and also the adaptation of the processes after the system has been introduced.

Social and legal framework

Social software affects many legal aspects, such as data protection, privacy and copyright protection, and often in a cross-national context. These aspects must be taken into account early on in software development.

Specific functionality and development methodology

Last but not least, socio-informatics also includes developing specific tools and functionalities for social software, for example in the area of ​​visualization and analysis of socially embedded software systems or in the area of ​​decision support for users based on their profile. This becomes most evident in the open source development of software, i.e. in the area of ​​software engineering in which the development of software itself is realized as an explicit social process.

New social processes mediated by software

Socially embedded software can enable social processes that cannot be implemented without software. For example, it is difficult to imagine how an encyclopedia comparable to Wikipedia could be created and maintained solely on the basis of mail and book printing. This raises central questions in socio-informatics:

  • Which (new) social processes can be implemented using software?
  • Why do certain mechanisms work and others not?
  • How do social processes change if they are supported with software? What can the added value be?
  • How do users and possibly even the structure of society change through socially embedded software?
  • What are the risks and how can they be contained?

It is about questions of usability, acceptance, social impact, economic benefit, legal consequences and also ethics. In order to tackle these questions, socio-informatics makes use of empirical and social science methods in particular and bridges the gap to the relevant subject areas.

Related terms

Socio-informatics particularly includes topics that are subsumed under the term "social computing" in the English-speaking world, but goes beyond that. The term social informatics is often used in English for the broader subject of socio- informatics . In contrast, the German term social informatics refers to the processing of information in the social sector and accordingly has a different meaning.

Socio-informatics in teaching

In Germany, many aspects of socio-informatics were previously anchored in various sub-areas and were taught in various events, for example in lectures on human-computer interaction or in lectures on the subject of Internet and data security . In many computer science courses, lectures are also integrated that deal directly with cross-sectional topics from the field of computer science and society . There are over 130 study programs in socio-informatics worldwide. A module on socio-informatics has been taught at the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen since 2009. The first socio-informatics course in Germany has been offered by the Technical University of Kaiserslautern since the 2013/14 winter semester . Since the 2015/16 winter semester, Furtwangen University has offered socio-informatics as a specialization in the IT product management bachelor's degree.

Socioinformatics in public

The International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI), the User-Centered Computing (USC) research division of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT and the Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen are institutional representatives of socio-informatics in Germany . The European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET) has existed in Europe since 2009 , which, together with the IISI, awards the renowned EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, there are some groups that deal with the interaction between society and computer science and are particularly committed to educating the population, for example the Chaos Computer Club and the Forum Computer Scientists for Peace and Social Responsibility . This work gives rise to new questions for academic research that can be worked on with empirical models from sociology, psychology and economics or theoretical models from philosophy, ethics and computer science.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kaoru Endo: On the Occasion of Publication of the Journal of Socio-Informatics . In: Journal of Socio-Informatics , Vol. 1 (1), 2008, pp. 3-4.
  2. ^ A b Peter Mertens: Failures in large-scale IT projects in public administration - a contribution to research into failure in business informatics . Working paper No. 1/2008 of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Department of Information Systems , 2nd edition 2008, de.scribd.com .
  3. ↑ a b wiwi.uni-siegen.de Institute for Information Systems and New Media at the University of Siegen
  4. ^ Fraunhofer Society in Sankt Augustin
  5. ↑ a b International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI)
  6. ^ S. Sawyer, H. Rosenbaum: Social informatics in the information sciences: Current activities and emerging directions . (PDF) In: Informing Science , 3 (2), 2000, pp. 89-95
  7. ^ Markus Rohde, Volker Wulf: Sozio-Informatik . Current catchphrase. In: Informatik Spektrum , Issue 34/2, 2011
  8. ^ Markus Rohde and Volker Wulf: Sozioinformatik . In: Informatiklexikon der Gesellschaft für Informatik
  9. ↑ L. Ramirez, S. Denef, T. Dyrks: Towards Human-Centered Support for Indoor Navigation , Abstracts of the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human-Interaction (SIGCHI) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2009, April 4 –9 2009, Boston MA, USA. ACM Press, New York, pp. 1279-1282
  10. ↑ social-informatics.org
  11. ↑ informatik.uni-kl.de
  12. ↑ hs-furtwangen.de
  13. ↑ fit.fraunhofer.de User-Centered Computing (USC) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
  14. ↑ European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET)
  15. ^ Preamble to the statutes of the CCC .
  16. ↑ FIfF - Forum Computer Scientists for Peace (ed.): Birthday party for the critical computer scientists . Network Friedenskooperative ( friedenskooperative.de [accessed on January 28, 2013]).