The World Wide Web is growing quickly and being applied to many new types of communications. As a basis for studying organizational communications, Yates and Orlikowski (1992; Orlikowski & Yates, 1994) proposed using genres. They de � ned genres as “typi� ed communicative actions characterized by similar substance and form and taken in response to recurrent situations ” (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, p. 299). They further suggested that communications in a new media would show both reproduction and adaptation of existing communicative genres as well as the emergence of new genres. We studied these phenomena on the World Wide Web by examining 1000 randomly selected Web pages and categorizing the type of genre represented. Although many pages recreated genres familiar from traditional media, we also saw examples of genres being adapted to take advantage of the linking and interactivity of the new medium and novel genres emerging to � t the unique communicative needs of the audience. We suggest that Web-site designers consider the genres that are appropriate for their situation and attempt to reproduce or adapt familiar genres.

This article discusses some key ideas from social informatics research and ends with a brief discussion of the character of the field today. Readers who wish to understand social informatics by learning about its origins and influences may wish to start in that later section and then return to the beginning for a more substantive focus. This article serves as a brief introduction to social informatics for information technology professionals and researchers, and includes numerous references to help interested readers readily locate more comprehensive resources

Social Informatics is the body of research that examines the design, uses, and consequences of information and communication technologies in ways that take into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. This article serves as a brief introduction to social informatics. Examples such as computer networks, scientific communication via electronic journals, and public access to the Internet are used to illustrate key ideas from social informatics research. Some of the key themes include: the importance of social contexts and work processes, socio-technical networks, public access to information, and social infrastructure for computing support. The article draws upon 25 years of systematic analytical and critical research about information technology and social change.

this article is to examine, quantify, and characterize the quantity and quality of Web links used in computing literature. Our aim is to provide definitive information related to the availability of URL references as a function of their age, their domain, the depth of the path used, as well as the technical reasons leading to failed links. Our research has been greatly aided by the emergence of online versions of traditional paper-based publications [4]. By tapping into the online libraries of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society we were able to download, extract, and verify 4,375 Web links appearing in print articles during the period from 1995--1999. Here, we describe the technologies related to Web references and retrieval, outlining the methodology we followed, presenting the results obtained, and discussing their implications

The Internet has fostered a faster, more interactive and e#ective model of scholarly publishing. However, as the quantity of information available is constantly increasing, its quality is threatened, since the traditional quality control mechanism of peer review is often not used (e.g., in online repositories of preprints, and by people publishing on their Web pages whatever they want). This paper

Collaboration increasingly takes place in virtual communities using the Internet. These communities are socio-technical systems that tend to evolve strongly and become more complex over time. To ensure that changes to these complex socio-technical systems are meaningful and acceptable to the community as a whole, the relevant members of the community need to be involved in their specification. The RENISYS method conceptualizes community specification processes as conversations for specification by relevant members. It supports this process in two steps. First, it uses formal composition norms to select the relevant community members who need to be involved in a particular conversation for specification. It then uses a formal model of conversations for specification to determine the acceptable conversational moves that the selected community members can make, as well as the status of their responsibilities and accomplishments at each point in time. By combining composition norms with conversations for specification, the specification processes can be precisely tailored to the specification support needs of the community.

This study explores the extent to which the information seeking behaviour of researchers active in the field of English Literature in the universities of the UK and the wider world has changed as a result of the developing electronic information revolution. It deals with the researchers ’ attitudes towards the Internet and examines their position with regard to utilizing the Internet as a publication outlet. The different types of electronic information sources for English literature are identified and the experiences of researchers using them explored. Finally, the study examines researcher attitudes towards electronic publication and to plans for a `virtual library’. The article concludes with recommendations for further study of the use of electronic resources in relation to information literacy and browsing and other facilities for subject access on the Internet.

The design and use of information technologies are not as easily separated as they may seem. Designers have much at stake in the use of their software, while users are greatly influenced by the design of the software that they use. In this article, I explore the complex relationships built up between the designers and users of human anatomy simulations, including processes of cooperation and conflict. I develop and apply a three-step process for studying the design and use of a software product in its social context. First, it is important to focus on the social worlds of designers and users that influence the development of the technology. Next, the emphasis shifts to the technology itself, which can be viewed as a boundary object emerging from the intersection of the contributing social worlds. Finally, the technology exhibits agency by reshaping the relationships and interactions among the contributing social worlds.

We frequently think of university scientists as inventors of new technologies, which are transferred from the university to industry organizations for innovation and diffusion. Because such processes are communication and information intensive, there are high expectations that use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can facilitate technology transfers and subsequent economic development. However, communication processes that foster scientific discovery and knowledge transfer are embedded in social networks; if ICT use influences technology transfer, it is likely to be through these networks. At the same time, ICTs will be shaped through their use in these social networks. We suggest a socio-technical perspective is best suited to study these reciprocal influences. In this paper, we outline a program of research to examine socio-technical networks in scientific academia/industry collaborations. We begin by reviewing key findings and projections about use of ICTs in know...

ABSTRACT Social informatics is the body of research that examines the design, uses and consequences of information and communication technologies in ways that take into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. This article draws upon some 25 years of systematic, analytical and critical research about information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social change to illustrate key ideas from social informatics research.