moderated by Paul DiPerna

THREAD #9

Paul DiPerna:

The fields of Web Science, e-science, Social Informatics, Information Science, and closely related fields of other names, are in their infancy right now.. Like so many other academic disciplines at such a young age, there are some growing pains in terms of definitions and organization.

Some say there is so much overlap across these research fields, that there must eventually be a recognized "universal field" and name to describe studying the social dynamics of technology..

Do you agree? Why, or why not?

If you were given the chance to lead the development of your research field...

What name would you give your field?

How broad would be its scope in terms of technology observed? (e.g. the Web, Internet, ICTs, etc)

How would you organize the field?

Fred Stutzman:

Fred Stutzman

Wow, this is a tough question. The deeper I go into academia, the more I realize just how difficult of a question it is. If you asked me a year or two ago if we should create a trasndiciplinary field of information dynamics, I'd probably agree. However, as my understanding of theoretical foundations increases, and the closer I get to a dissertation topic, the more difficult I realize this is.

I guess the question is - do we create a new science, or a hybrid science?

For example, think of bioinformatics. I would classify bioinformatics as a hybrid science - biology and informatics. Therefore, the literature in the field has two main theoretical foundations - certainly they are not inventing a new biology.

However, the social technologies we study are both new and not so easily classified as bioinformatics. There are sociological components, information science components, but there are also new aspects. Whereas a hybrid science combines two disciplines, I'd classify social technology as something different from a hybrid as it creates new research questions. That is, it is an affective science.

Unfortunately, the more I talk to academics (though, not the academics at my institution, to their credit), the more I hear how being multi-disciplinary is bad. Which is tough because I can't seem to imagine myself in a silo. I don't think I'd be happy, and I don't think that most people in our field would be happy in that setup. But does that mean that we won't get jobs, etc?

Also, what will the graduates of our programs do? A computer science or bioinformatics graduate has many discrete career paths. What career paths (realistically) do social technologists have? There are only so many jobs at Yahoo research. Of course, this is problem with many disciplines... perhaps it is our mission to teach critical aspects to social technology. You just don't see that being taught in most mainline programs right now.

I'm really impressed with Michigan establishing a program in social computing. I think that's a critical vote of confidence for the field.

At the same time, it is important that we remember we are studying the effects, not the artifact. When the telephone was invented, it changed society dramatically. And you wouldnt have known that if you just studied the artifact. Social technology is causing change, it is having strong reverberations... it is up to us to uncover them.

Sarita Yardi:

Sarita Yardi

I think there should be a specific discipline that looks to describe the nature of what happens on the Internet. It would be along the lines of a "study of the Internet". I am not sure what it should be called, although that is maybe a less important question as it is primarily one of semantics (although everyone of course will argue over whatever term is actually chosen). My thoughts on what would take place in this "Web Science" are somewhat biased - well, entirely biased - since my advisor is working on a new initiative at Georgia Tech that will be called Web Science which will be addressing these topics. My Human-Centered Computing PhD program also just started a new specializiation called Social Computing (just in time for me to take my quals in it this coming year) and I think this field could be a core subset of Web Science, although it would be far from a comprehensive coverage of the entire field.

It's important to define the differences between types of disciplinarity - multi, trans, and inter. To the best of my understanding, multidisciplinarity cuts across multiple disciplines that are used in parallel, transdisciplinarity focuses on topics that don't fit into a specific discipline, and interdisciplinarity incorporates pieces from multiple disciplines into a particular study. Transdisciplinarity, in my opinion, is the best characterization of what a new Web Science would involve, primarily because existing methods in other disciplines seem to fall short in helping us to analyze much of what takes place online. For example, in looking to analyze teens' interactions on MySpace, we can interview teens all over the country, or we can get the log files from Tom and derive some quantiative trends in use, but it is a difficult and cost ineffective process to attempt to link the two together and paint a comprehensive portrait of the social dynamics on MySpace. I'd guess that PEW does the best job at this, but they have a lot of resources and highly skilled experts to work with.

Any new methods in a Web Science discipline would inevitably draw from what we already know works and doesn't work in other disciplines, but I'd like to think there is space in this field for new methods to emerge from these existing practices. Similarly, complex emerging topics like IRB on the Internet, research ethics, offline and online comparison studies, or Internet policies (such as the use of the Internet in schools) present challenges to researchers who are trying to understand and analyze what takes place in these spaces. There are a number of deficiences in the practices and tools that are at our disposal right now as researchers. It is possible that these deficiencies could be better legitimized and addressed if there were a specific discipline that was dedicated to this field of study.

Miia Akkinen:

Miia Akkinen

This is a tough question. We previously discussed about the children, school and Internet, and then I wrote that the Internet should rather be embedded in learning rather than handled as a formal content area but it would be good if Internet is discussed in many subjects. In a more advanced level at universities I can't see any reason why Web science, etc. couldn't be a separate discipline.

The social computing in Michigan is a great start indeed, and I am looking forward to seeing other implementations, too. I like the name "social computing" and I would like the see the word "social" in the name of these new disciplines. In Information Systems Science the people are an essential part of information systems, and this could be more emphasized in these social computing sciences.

Paul Lawton:

Paul K. Lawton

I have been thinking about this, coming from Sociology, where I often have to justify my research in terms of a "the sociology of ________." (in this case, the unfortunate sticking name for many seems to be "The Sociology of Cyberspace," which I may have already complained about).

I think it is inevitable that there will be a separate "Information and Communications Technologies" subfield, which absolutely makes sense on many practical levels (funding being the key one). When this does happen, I think it has no choice but to remain as broad as possible, especially a field that (so far) has to keep pace with the speed in which new forms emerge.

I have also, like Fred, been warned in the past about staying true to my field and not becoming too multidisciplinary, as it is apparently harder to find a job after I am done with my PhD (I was actually ready to apply to communications programs, which I decided in the end would be too risky if these warnings turned out to be true - it is hard enough finding an academic job).

The other side of this is that these artificial boundaries we live in - like Fred, I can't imagine myself working in a silo either - are exactly that - artificial. If you look at any reference list from publications in this area, they come from all across the disciplines, rightly so. So I fear grouping all the "Information and Communications Technologies" would be a bad move, in that you would miss the vitality of having all of these varying disciplines informing research. I think specific disciplinary journals, conferences etc. do the job nicely without having to lump everyone into one department.

Sarita was talking about the "deficiences in the practices and tools that are at our disposal right now as researchers," I think this is exactly true, in that when I went up for ethics review for my Metafilter study, the ethic board had no problems with it at all, and that they explained that it is like watching the audience at an ice-hockey game because participants in an online community "know they are in public." This was surprising to me, because some of the Metafilter users were very upset that I would be "invading their privacy." At that time there were over twenty thousand registered users, so how could this be? Clearly, there were issues that the traditional disciplines were unable to deal with here.

So, in the end, I am on the fence; I can see both sides, and I actively dislike the boundary maintenance that happens in academia, but I also see the need for a separate sub-discipline to tackle the issues Sarita raised. I just worry what happens whenever we put up walls of any kind, in that I fear what we might be missing out on.

Right now, I work as a sociologist, but I definitely refuse to limit myself to sociology, and this works for me.

Paul DiPerna:

Paul DiPerna

Thanks everyone--

This roundtable exercise has been a treat for me. I greatly appreciate all of your comments and ideas on the various request/question threads. All four of you have provided rich discussion on some interesting issues.


May 18, 2007