- Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse Universityedit
Workplaces in all sectors are experiencing digitalization spurred primarily by increasing access to data and AI. Many initiatives are failing to produce expected outcomes, and are even producing negative outcomes on workplace wellbeing.... more
Workplaces in all sectors are experiencing digitalization spurred primarily by increasing access to data and AI. Many initiatives are failing to produce expected outcomes, and are even producing negative outcomes on workplace wellbeing. The insights generated by CSCW researchers seem to have failed to reach their targets: the challenges and opportunities for successful appropriation of technology have rarely been adopted by managers, or they were not articulated in a way that facilitated follow-on success. A failure of academic research to impact the world is a known problem – information systems research is abundant with analysis of the managerial challenges that have not been noted by managers themselves – it has been less discussed among CSCW researchers. In this workshop, we wish to gather researchers and practitioners interested
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Co-working and co-living companies are rising globally and the increasing participation within the gig economy has extended the range of users of community-based spaces (co-spaces) and raised a set of different community models in... more
Co-working and co-living companies are rising globally and the increasing participation within the gig economy has extended the range of users of community-based spaces (co-spaces) and raised a set of different community models in considering how to support them. In this paper, we specifically focus on the needs of digital nomads in co-spaces who struggle to pursue their personal and professional freedom. In so doing, we raise awareness of existing tensions that currently hinder the social engagement of these individuals in co-space settings.
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Public libraries have a long legacy of serving the public via service provision, yet this poster argues that the library needs to be reconsidered for the generativity embedded in its physical space. Investigating the New York Public... more
Public libraries have a long legacy of serving the public via service provision, yet this poster argues that the library needs to be reconsidered for the generativity embedded in its physical space. Investigating the New York Public Library and Seattle Public Library as result of a study focused on mobile knowledge workers shows how the library is currently being used as a 1) space for productivity; 2) space for community building and sociality; 3) space for meeting; and 4) infrastructural space. Adopting this framework puts a new onus not only on designers (or renovators) of a library’s physical environments, but equally on those who help to establish the norms of practice in these spaces
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The last few years have witnessed the emergence of an accessible location-based infrastructure built on the commercialization of the global positioning system (GPS), the development of location-based services such as Google Maps, and the... more
The last few years have witnessed the emergence of an accessible location-based infrastructure built on the commercialization of the global positioning system (GPS), the development of location-based services such as Google Maps, and the emergence of ’locative’ and, particularly, ‘socio-locative’ practices (i.e., activities that meld locative metadata and social interaction). When considered with a short term lens, the co-occurrence of socio-locative practices and locative technology appears to be an example of technological determinism. However, an historical view suggests that location has long played an important role in mediated social communication. Comparison of the practices spawned by the introduction of three previous technologies—the landline telephone, the personal computer, and the mobile communication device (e.g., mobile phone, BlackBerry—show that individuals engaged in these earlier forms of mediated communication (e.g., talking at a distance, instant messaging, SMS ...
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This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1822228.
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In this panel, we will engage with the conference's membership and friends to consider directions for the possible futures of practice-centered computing. This panel is not targeting or aiming to result in a single, agreed... more
In this panel, we will engage with the conference's membership and friends to consider directions for the possible futures of practice-centered computing. This panel is not targeting or aiming to result in a single, agreed "universal” vision, nor to ask for a shared vision among the panelists and the audience. Rather, we offer several and diverse vision statements by distinguished and innovative ECSCW scholars, being experts in their specific domain or context of research. These statements will be necessarily incomplete until the ECSCW membership has joined the discussion, offering their own, additional visions of the futures of the field. With this, the panel aims to engage in a discussion that foresees exciting future research directions for the field of ECSCW but likewise also unveils potential hurdles the community might face.
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Wikipedia is one of the most successful online communities in history, yet it struggles to attract and retain women editors-a phenomenon known as the gender gap. We investigate this gap by focusing on the voices of experienced women... more
Wikipedia is one of the most successful online communities in history, yet it struggles to attract and retain women editors-a phenomenon known as the gender gap. We investigate this gap by focusing on the voices of experienced women Wikipedians. In this interview-based study (N=25), we identify a core theme among these voices: safety. We reveal how our participants perceive safety within their community, how they manage their safety both conceptually and physically, and how they act on this understanding to create safe spaces on and off Wikipedia. Our analysis shows Wikipedia functions as both a multidimensional and porous space encompassing a spectrum of safety. Navigating this space requires these women to employ sophisticated tactics related to identity management, boundary management, and emotion work. We conclude with a set of provocations to spur the design of future online environments that encourage equity, inclusivity, and safety for historically marginalized users.
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Review Article: To be networked, hyperlinked, portable: Kazys Varnelis (ed.), Networked Publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. x + 176 pp. ISBN 9780262220859, $35 (hbk) Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui (eds), The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Ann Arbor: University...more
Take a look at the titles of the three books reviewed here: ‘networked publics’, ‘hyperlinked society’, ‘portable communities’. The time must be ripe within the analytical corner of media and technology studies to question and define our... more
Take a look at the titles of the three books reviewed here: ‘networked publics’, ‘hyperlinked society’, ‘portable communities’. The time must be ripe within the analytical corner of media and technology studies to question and define our state of mediated interconnection. What do we speak of when we refer to being networked, hyperlinked and portable? To be networked is both a physical and conceptual manifestation of relation. What it means to be networked is a reflexive awareness of how one’s position or activities correspond with other members of that social unit. On the one hand, to be networked is to be aware at once of the local as it is the global. On the other hand, to be hyperlinked or portable does not connote the same thing: there, it is primarily the technology or the situation that is responsible for doing the defining, not the nature of the relation. This same game can be played with the words ‘publics’, ‘society’, and ‘community’. Community is the term du jour these days, corroborated by formative works such as Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community (2000[1993]) on one end of the spectrum and Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) on the other. In either case, it is commonly understood that individuals within communities share some commonality and express their new media & society
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There have been so many promises. An open platform for community building. An accessible arena for deliberative discussion. A means to reach across space and disregard time to forge new relationships and rekindle old ones. An arena to... more
There have been so many promises. An open platform for community building. An accessible arena for deliberative discussion. A means to reach across space and disregard time to forge new relationships and rekindle old ones. An arena to deliberate and solve ...
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Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jin-10.1177_02683962211050943 for Digital assemblages, information infrastructures, and mobile knowledge work by Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, Steve Sawyer and Ingrid Erickson in Journal of Information Technology
We theorize mobile knowledge workers’ uses of digital and material resources in support of their working practices. We do so to advance current conceptualizations of both “information infrastructures” and “digital assemblages” as elements... more
We theorize mobile knowledge workers’ uses of digital and material resources in support of their working practices. We do so to advance current conceptualizations of both “information infrastructures” and “digital assemblages” as elements of contemporary knowledge work. We focus on mobile knowledge workers as they are (increasingly) self-employed (e.g., as freelancers, entrepreneurs, temporary workers, and contractors), competing for work, and collaborating with others: one likely future of work that we can study empirically. To pursue their work, mobile knowledge workers draw together collections of commodity digital technologies or digital assemblages (e.g., laptops, phones, public WiFi, cloud storage, and apps), relying on a reservoir of knowledge about new and emergent means to navigate this professional terrain. We find that digital assemblages are created and repurposed by workers in their infrastructuring practices and in response to mobility demands and technological environ...
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The rise of co-working and co-living spaces, as well as related shared spaces such as makerspaces and hackerspaces-a group we refer to as various types of "co-spaces" - has helped facilitate a parallel expansion of the... more
The rise of co-working and co-living spaces, as well as related shared spaces such as makerspaces and hackerspaces-a group we refer to as various types of "co-spaces" - has helped facilitate a parallel expansion of the "digital nomad (DN)" lifestyle. Digital nomads, colloquially, are those individuals that leverage digital infrastructures and sociotechnical systems to live location-independent lives. In this paper, we use Oldenburg's framework of a first (home), second (work), and third (social) place as an analytical lens to investigate how digital nomads understand the affordance of these different types of spaces. We present an analysis of posts and comments on the '/r/digitalnomad' subreddit, a vibrant online community where DNs ask questions and share advice about the different types of places and amenities that are necessary to pursue their digital nomad lifestyle. We found that places are often assessed positively or negatively relative to one ...
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According to Parsons (1935), values can be understood as “the creative element in action in general, that element which is causally independent of the positivistic factors of heredity and environment ” (1935: 306). Since Parson’s time, a... more
According to Parsons (1935), values can be understood as “the creative element in action in general, that element which is causally independent of the positivistic factors of heredity and environment ” (1935: 306). Since Parson’s time, a wide range of research has helped to deepen this somewhat opaque insight (Fleischmann, 2014). We now have a burgeoning field dedicated to studying values in relation to technologies and design that has produced empirical studies by scholars such as Ahn et al. (2012) regarding the role that values play in attitudes toward creative remixing and Shilton (2013), who introduces the concept of value levers to show how values can enable new ways of looking at problems and creatively engendering solutions. However, it is also well established that different cultures and organizations prioritize creativity and creative work differently, indicating that an interrelationship between values and creativity may not be universal (Fleischmann et al., 2011; Hofstede...
Purpose and Intended Audience: According to Parsons (1935), values can be understood as “the creative element in action in general, that element which is causally independent of the positivistic factors of heredity and environment” (1935:... more
Purpose and Intended Audience: According to Parsons (1935), values can be understood as “the creative element in action in general, that element which is causally independent of the positivistic factors of heredity and environment” (1935: 306). Since Parson’s time, a wide range of research has helped to deepen this somewhat opaque insight (Fleischmann, 2014). We now have a burgeoning field dedicated to studying values in relation to technologies and design that has produced empirical studies by scholars such as Ahn et al. (2012) regarding the role that values play in attitudes toward creative remixing and Shilton (2013), who introduces the concept of value levers to show how values can enable new ways of looking at problems and creatively engendering solutions. However, it is also well established that different cultures and organizations prioritize creativity and creative work differently, indicating that an interrelationship between values and creativity may not be universal (Flei...
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We analyze a set of Twitter hashtags to ascertain how contemporary parlance in social media can illuminate the rich cultural intersections between modern forms of work, use of technology, and physical mobility. We use network word... more
We analyze a set of Twitter hashtags to ascertain how contemporary parlance in social media can illuminate the rich cultural intersections between modern forms of work, use of technology, and physical mobility. We use network word co-occurrence analysis and topic modeling to reveal several thematic areas of discourse present in Twitter, each with its own affiliated terms and distinctive emphases. The first theme centers on worker identity and is currently dominated by the experiences of digital nomads. The second theme focuses on the practicalities of working in a physical location and is currently dominated by issues related to co-working spaces. Finally, the third theme is a loose and speculative set of ideas around the evolution of work in the future, predicting how enterprises may have to adapt to new ways of working. Our contribution is twofold. First, we contribute to scholarship on social media methods by showing how a robust analysis of Twitter data can help scholars find su...
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This all-day workshop aims to promote convergence among its participants on research related to working with intelligent machines. We define intelligent machines as both material (e.g., robots) and immaterial (e.g., algorithms) computing... more
This all-day workshop aims to promote convergence among its participants on research related to working with intelligent machines. We define intelligent machines as both material (e.g., robots) and immaterial (e.g., algorithms) computing technologies that can be characterized by autonomy, the ability to learn, and the ability to interact with other systems and with humans. The workshop has three goals: identifying specific research problems around work and intelligent machines, developing a common language base that can facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers, and identifying information and cyber-infrastructure needs to support convergent research. Workshop activities will facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and strive to generate high-impact research ideas to advance each of these goals.
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We present findings from interviews with 23 individuals affiliated with non-profit organizations (NPOs) to understand how they deploy information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their civic engagement efforts. Existing research... more
We present findings from interviews with 23 individuals affiliated with non-profit organizations (NPOs) to understand how they deploy information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their civic engagement efforts. Existing research about NPO ICT use is often critical, but we did not find evidence that NPOs fail to use tools effectively. Rather, we detail how NPOs assemble various ICTs to create infrastructures that align with their values. Overall, we find that existing theories about technology choice (e.g., task-technology fit, uses and gratifications) do not explain the assemblages NPOs describe. We argue that the infrastructures they fashion can be explained through the lens of moral economies rather than utility. Together, the rhetorics of infrastructure and moral economies capture the motivations and constraints our participants expressed and challenge how prevailing theories of ICT use describe the non-profit landscape.
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ABSTRACT The focus of this panel is the pragmatics of data sharing as framed by the needs and pressures of scholarly work. Panelists represent a lively blend of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods researchers with recent... more
ABSTRACT The focus of this panel is the pragmatics of data sharing as framed by the needs and pressures of scholarly work. Panelists represent a lively blend of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods researchers with recent experiences in developing and sharing data. Panelists will present research and address questions related to data collection and management, human subjects protocols, data archival and data repositories and other emergent issues.
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Review Article: To be networked, hyperlinked, portable Kazys Varnelis (ed.), Networked Publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. x+ 176 pp. ISBN 9780262220859, $35 (hbk) Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui (eds), The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age. Ann Arbor: University o...more
Review Article: Making, breaking promises? Civic spheres and virtual engagements Henrik Bang and Anders Esmark (eds), New Publics with/out Democracy, Frederiksberg, Denmark: Samfundslitteratur Press/Nordicom, 2007; 380 pp.: 9788759311493, 348 DKK (pbk) Elizabeth Losh, Virtualpolitik: An Electroni...more
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ABSTRACT The focus of this panel is the pragmatics of data sharing as framed by the needs and pressures of scholarly work. Panelists represent a lively blend of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods researchers with recent... more
ABSTRACT The focus of this panel is the pragmatics of data sharing as framed by the needs and pressures of scholarly work. Panelists represent a lively blend of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods researchers with recent experiences in developing and sharing data. Panelists will present research and address questions related to data collection and management, human subjects protocols, data archival and data repositories and other emergent issues.