The Social Side of Information

Week 1: Course Introduction

Jan. 20th
Introduction, Organization, and Administrative Fun.

No Readings

Jan. 22th
Chapters 1 and 2 in Brown, John Seely and Paul Duguid. 2000. The Social Life of Information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2]

Week 2: Social Implications and Use of the Telephone

Jan. 27th
Chapters 1 and 3 in Fischer, C.S. (1992). America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Jan. 29th
Chapters 7 and 8 in Fischer, C.S. (1992). America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Week 3: Users & Technology: Determinism, SCOT, and ANT

Feb. 3rd
Heilbroner, R. (1967) “Do Machines Make History?”. Technology and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 3, 335-345.

Rosen, P. (1993) “The Social Construction of Mountain Bikes: Technology and Postmodernity in the Cycle Industry”. Social Studies of Science, Vol. 23, No. 3 479-513.

Feb. 5th
Esnault, Liliane, Romain Zeiliger, and Frederic Vermeulin. 2006. “On the user of Actor-Network Theory for Developing Web Services Dedicated to Communities of Practice.” in Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, edited by E. Tomadaki and P. Scott.

Chapter 3 in MacKenzie, Donald. 1996. “Economic and Sociological Explanations of Technological Change.” in Knowing Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marx, Leo. 1997. Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. Social Research, Vol. 64, No. 3. [link] (Optional)

Reading Response 1 Due

Assignment 1 Distributed

Week 4: Social Implications of the Internet

Feb. 10th
DiMaggio, Paul, Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson. 2001. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:307-336.

Feb. 12th
McKenna, Katelyn, and John A. Bargh. 2000. “Plan 9 From Cyberspace: The Implications of the Internet for Personality and Social Psychology.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4.
(Note that this is NOT in your reader.)

Week 5: Current Issues in Socio-Technical Systems: User-Generated Content

Feb. 17th
Kollock, Peter. 1999. “The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace.” Chapter 9 in Communities in Cyberspace, Kollock and Smith, eds

Rafaeli, Sheizaf , and Daphne R. Raban. 2005. “Information sharing online: a research challenge.” International Journal of Knowledge and Learning 1:62-79.

Feb. 19th
Selections from Surowiecki - The Wisdom of Crowds
Selections from Anderson - The Long Tail

Assignment 1 Due

Week 6: Reading and Evaluating Research

Feb. 24th
Research Methods Knowledge Base - Qualitative Section (Online Only) Read the entire ‘Qualitative Measures‘ Section and all five subsections as well.

Traweek, Sharon. 1988. Beamtimes and lifetimes : the world of high energy physicists. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (Selected Sections)

Feb. 26th
Chapter 8 in Dooley, David. 2000. “The Logic of Social Research: ruling out rival hypotheses.” in Social Science Research Methods, edited by David Dooley: Prentice Hall.

DiMaggio, P., Bart, B., (2008) “Make Money Surfing the Web? The Impact of Internet Use on the Earnings of U.S. Workers.” American Sociological Review, 73(2), 227-250. (skim for understanding of problem and methods; we will discuss content of this paper later in Week 11)

Reading Response 2 Due

Information & Technology Adoption and Use

Week 7: Social Network Analysis and Information Technology - Theory and Examples

Mar. 3rd
Chapters 1-2 in Wasserman, Stanley, and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” The American Journal of Sociology 78:1360-1380.

Mar. 5th
McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin and James Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 27, pp. 415-444.

Week 8: Case Studies on Information in Networks

Mar. 10th
Hurlbert, Jeanne S., Valerie A. Haines and John J. Beggs. 2000. “Core Networks and Tie Activation: What Kinds of Routine Networks Allocate Resources in Nonroutine Situations?” American Sociological Review, 65 (4) (Aug., 2000), pp. 598-618.

Mar. 12th
Adamic, Lada A., Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar. 2003. “A Social Network Caught in the Web.” First Monday 8. [link]

Week 9: Diffusion of Innovation

Mar. 17th
Chapter 1 in Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations. New York, NY: Free Press.

Geroski, P.A. 2000. “Models of technology diffusion.” Research Policy 29:603-625.

Mar. 19th
Chapters 1-3 in Valente, Thomas. 1995. Network Models of the Diffusion of Innovations. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Reading Response 3 Due

Assignment 2 Distributed

Week 10: SPRING RECESS: March 23-27

Week 11: Values, Access and Use of Information

Mar. 31st
Chapters 8, 10-11 in Lessig, Lawrence. 2006. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (v2). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Apr. 2nd
Stanley, Laura D. 2003. “Beyond Access: Psychosocial Barriers to Computer Literacy.” The Information Society 19:407-416.

DiMaggio, P., Bart, B., (2008) “Make Money Surfing the Web? The Impact of Internet Use on the Earnings of U.S. Workers.” American Sociological Review, 73(2), 227-250.

Week 12: Information Sharing and Knowledge Transfer

Apr. 7th
Ryan, Dan. 2006. “Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification.” Sociological Theory 24:228-254.

Apr. 9th
MacKenzie, Donald. 1996. “Chapter 10: Tacit Knowledge and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons.” in Knowing Machines. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Osterloh, Margit and Bruno S. Frey. 2000. “Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Forms.” Organization Science 11:538-550.

Deconstructing the User

Week 13: Identity, Reputation, and Trust

Apr. 14th
Donath, Judith. 1998. “Identity and deception in the virtual community.” in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by P. Kollock and M. Smith. London: Routledge.

Chapters 1-2 in Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Apr. 16th
Ubois, Jeff. 2003. “Online Reputation Systems.” Pp. 1-33 in Release 1.0: www.edventure.com.

Marsh, Stephen and Mark R. Dibben. 2003. “The Role of Trust in Information Science and Technology.” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 37:465-498.

Assignment 2 Due

Week 14: Challenges to Designing with the Social in Mind

Apr. 21st
Ackerman, Mark S. 2000. “The intellectual challenge of CSCW: the gap between social requirements and technical feasability.” Human Computer Interaction 15:179-203.

Apr. 23th
Dourish, Paul. 2006. “Implications for Design.” Pp. 541-550 in Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI). Montreal, Canada.

Week 15: Community Structure & Dynamics

Apr. 28th

Wellman, Barry and Milena Gulia. 1999. “Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities.” Chapter 7 in Communities in Cyberspace, Kollock and Smith, eds.

Wilson, Samuel M., and Leighton C. Peterson. 2002. “The Anthropology of Online Communities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 31:449-467.

Apr. 30th
In-Class Discussion

Week 16: Wrapping Up

May 5th
Roundtable Presentations of Course Paper Research