Informatics is the study of computation and information. Social Informatics is the body of research that examines the design, uses, and consequences of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in ways that take into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts. The term was pioneered by the late Rob Kling at Indiana University where he founded the Center for Social Informatics.
A number of axioms underpin Social Informatics.
- The meaning and significance of ICT is not technically determined but a product of complex socio-technical relationships.
- Knowledge and scholarship of the above is best pursued through engagement with actors and communities who have a stake in ICT, whether they be developers, users or subjects.
- ICT diffusion throughout society has and will have a significant impact on our lives. However particular outcomes are far from inevitable. The process involves kinds of movements whose advocates focus on computer-based systems as instruments to fashion preferred social orders. Social informatics itself represents one such computing movement based on achieving equity and fairness through design and development.
The challenge of social informatics is to produce explanation and knowledge that goes beyond determinism, or the technical properties of technologies, or impacts studies, but develops understandings that allow us to describe the close imbrications of technology and society.
