The principal message of the ‘Human Choice and Computers’ (HCC) tradition and its associated conferences over the years is that there are choices and alternatives. In this volume, Social Informatics takes two directions. The first supports readers in interpreting of the meaning of Social Informatics. The second, more extensive part develops an overview of various applications of Social Informatics. Researchers inspired by Social Informatics touch many areas of human and social life.

Here is a sustained investigation into the human contexts of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), covering both research and theory in this emerging field. Authors Kling, Rosenbaum, and Sawyer demonstrate that the design, adoption, and use of ICTs are deeply connected to people's actions as well as to the environments in which they are used. In Chapters One and Two, they define Social Informatics and offer a pragmatic overview of the discipline. In Chapters Three and Four, they articulate its fundamental ideas for specific audiences and present important research findings about the personal, social, and organizational consequences of ICT design and use. Chapter Five covers Social Informatics education; Chapter Six discusses ways to communicate Social Informatics to professional and research communities; and Chapter Seven provides a summary and look to the future.

Social Informatics: Past, Present and Future is a collection of twelve papers that provides a state-of-the-art review of 21st century social informatics. Two papers review the history of social informatics, and show that its intellectual roots can be found in the late 1970s and early ’80s and that it emerged in several different locations around the world before it coalesced in the US in the mid-1990s. The evolution of social informatics is described under four periods: foundational work, development and expansion, a robust period of coherence, and a period of diversification that continues today. Five papers provide a view of the breadth and depth of contemporary social informatics, demonstrating the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches that can be used. A further five papers explore the future of social informatics and offer provocative and disparate visions of its trajectory, ranging from arguments for a new philosophical grounding for social informatics, to calls for a social informatics based on practice thinking and materiality. This book presents a view of SI that emphasizes the core relationship among people, ICT and organizational and social life from a perspective that integrates aspects of social theory and demonstrates clearly that social informatics has never been a more necessary research endeavor than it is now.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Workshops held at the International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2014, which took place in Barcelona, Spain, in November 2014. This year SocInfo 2014 included nine satellite workshops: the City Labs Workshop, the Workshop on Criminal Network Analysis and Mining, CRIMENET, the Workshop on Interaction and Exchange in Social Media, DYAD, the Workshop on Exploration of Games and Gamers, EGG, the Workshop on HistoInformatics, the Workshop on Socio-Economic Dynamics, Networks and Agent-based Models, SEDNAM, the Workshop on Social Influence, SI, the Workshop on Social Scientists Working with Start-Ups and the Workshop on Social Media in Crowdsourcing and Human Computation, SoHuman.

The study of people, information, and communication technologies and the contexts in which these technologies are designed, implemented, and used has long interested scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including the social study of computing, science and technology studies, the sociology of technology, and management information systems. As ICT use has spread from organizations into the larger world, these devices have become routine information appliances in our social lives, researchers have begun to ask deeper and more profound questions about how our lives have become bound up with technologies. A common theme running through this research is that the relationships among people, technology, and context are dynamic, complex, and critically important to understand. This book explores social informatics (SI), one important and dynamic approach that researchers have used to study these complex relationships. SI is "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technology that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts" (Kling 1998, p. 52; 1999). SI provides flexible frameworks to explore complex and dynamic socio-technical interactions. As a domain of study related largely by common vocabulary and conclusions, SI critically examines common conceptions of and expectations for technology, by providing contextual evidence. This book describes the evolution of SI research and identifies challenges and opportunities for future research. In what might be seen as an example of socio-technical "natural selection," SI emerged in six different locations during the 1980s and 1990s: Norway, Slovenia, Japan, the former Soviet Union, the UK and, last, the U.S. As SI evolved, the version popularized in the US became globally dominant. The evolution of SI is presented in five stages: emergence, foundational, expansion, coherence, and transformation. Thus, we divide SI research into five major periods: an emergence stage, when various forms of SI emerged around the globe, an early period of foundational work which grounds SI (Pre-1990s), a period of expansion (1990s), a robust period of coherence and influence by Rob Kling (2000–2005), and a period of transformation (2006–present). Following the description of the five periods we discuss the evolution throughout the periods under five sections: principles, concepts, approaches, topics, and findings. Principles refer to the overarching motivations and labels employed to describe scholarly work. Approaches describe the theories, frameworks, and models employed in analysis, emphasizing the multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of SI. Concepts include specific processes, entities, themes, and elements of discourse within a given context, revealing a shared SI language surrounding change, complexity, consequences, and social elements of technology. Topics label the issues and general domains studied within social informatics, ranging from scholarly communication to online communities to information systems. Findings from seminal SI works illustrate growing insights over time and demonstrate how repeatable explanations unify SI. In the concluding remarks, we raise questions about the possible futures of SI research.

"This book deals with Web 2.0 and how social informatics are impacting higher education practice, pedagogical theory and innovations"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2022, which took place in Glasgow, UK, during October 19-21, 2022. The 22 full papers, 8 short papers, and 4 late breaking papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. The deal with topics ranging from information-system design on social concepts to analyzing complex social systems using computational methods or explore socio-technical techniques using social sciences methods.

According to the Pew Foundation’s "Internet in American Life Study," over 60 million Americans per year use the Internet to search for health information. All those concerned with healthcare and how to obtain personally relevant medical information form a large additional target group Many Medical Informatics programs–both in the United States and abroad–include a course in Consumer Health Informatics as part of their curriculum. This book, designed for use in a classroom, will be the first textbook dedicated solely to the specific concerns of consumer health informatics Consumer Health Informatics is an interactive text; filled with case studies and discussion questions With international authorship and edited by five leaders in the field, Consumer Health Informatics has tapped some of the best resources in informatics today

Community Informatics (CI) is the application of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to enable community processes and the achievement of community objectives. CI goes beyond the "Digital Divide" to making ICT access usable and useful to excluded populations and communities for local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment. CI approaches ICTs from a "community" perspective and develops strategies and techniques for managing their use by communities both virtual and physical including the variety of Community Networking applications. CI assumes that both communities have characteristics, requirements, and opportunities that require different strategies for ICT intervention and development from individual access and use. Also, CI addresses ICT use in Developing Countries as well as among the poor, the marginalized, the elderly, or those living in remote locations in Developed Countries. CI is of interest both to ICT practitioners and academic researchers and addresses the connections between the policy and pragmatic issues arising from the tens of thousands of Community Networks, Community Technology Centres, Telecentres, Community Communications Centres, and Telecottages globally along with the rapidly emerging field of electronically based virtual "communities."

The book provides an overview of the basic concepts of informatics. Dealing with the concerns and issues of digital technology, the text has been written with the objective of introducing students with the tools and applications of information technology, highlighting its use by the digital society. It creates awareness on the nature of emerging digital knowledge society and social issues. Organized into six chapters, the book explains the fundamentals of informatics, besides sharing and analyzing the consequences of rapid computerization. Beginning with an overview of information technology explaining evolution of computers, computer classification, computer hardware and networking, the book moves to the Internet which is considered as a knowledge repository. It then explains IPR, copyright, patents and software license agreement. The book also highlights and discusses social informatics, e-Governance, applications of informatics in various subject areas and futuristic IT. The book is primarily intended as a text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of various disciplines wherein ‘Informatics’ is prescribed as a core or foundation course. The book will also be of immense use to general readers who are interested in knowing the applications of information technology. Key Features 1. Provides updated information as per the course curriculum of many universities. 2. Includes labeled and immaculate illustrations for clear understanding of the concepts. 3. Chapter-end review questions to reinforce to concepts understanding and to help students prepare for examinations. 4. Presents an extensive glossary of technical terms. Solution Manual is available for adopting faculty.