At the heart of information ecologies

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances J. Ranney
Keyword(s):  
Information Ecologies

Nardi and O'Day's information ecologies

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert R. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Information Ecologies

Cultural Acceptance of ICTs

2011 ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Jasmine M. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Development Tool ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Information Ecologies

The emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated much debate both in and out of academia in relation to theories ranging from economic advancement to imperialism. In the context of the ‘low-income’ economies, a dominant discourse associated with ICTs persists. The discourse of development predicts that nations which have joined the global market will use ICTs to harness global knowledge that will enable them to be competitive and therefore attain development. This has led to change in policy from international to local as ICTs are embraced as the next big development tool. Recently however, there have been reports of more failures of ICTs initiatives than success as professionals in the industry complain about unsustainability of the systems. A genuine issue is that so far analysis of this discourse has tended to be economically or technically deterministic, with little attention paid to social and cultural perspectives. In order to understand how the role of norms, practices and politics of people in particular communities play in this discourse in ‘low income’ economies, over 1000 semi-qualitative questionnaires were analysed from five geographical locations in The Gambia. A key conclusion that has emerged from the research is that there are different attitudes towards the ICTs in the different locations, which vary from full acceptance to rejection of ICTs. Such diverse reactions are underpinned by the religion and information ecologies in which gender plays a critical part. This result challenges the ICT4D agenda, and might be applied to reports of unsustainable ICT initiatives, especially in Africa.

scholarly journals Paying Attention: Big Data and Social Advertising as Barriers to Ecological Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10589
Author(s):  
Kaitlin Kish
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
Sustainability Research ◽  
User Data ◽  
Social Advertising ◽  
Information Ecologies ◽  
Scientific Facts

Big data and online media conglomerates have significant power over the behavior of individuals. Online platforms have become the largest canvas for advertising, and the most profitable commodity is users’ attention. Large tech companies, such as Facebook and Alphabet, use historically effective psychological advertisement tactics in tandem with enormous amounts of user data to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of their customers, who are not the end-users, but the corporations competing for advertising space on users’ screens. This commodification of attention is a serious threat to socio-ecological sustainability. In this paper, I argue that big data and social advertising platforms, such as Facebook, use commodified attention to take advantage of psycho-social neuroticisms and commodity fetishism in modern individuals to perpetuate conspicuous consumption. They also contribute to highly fragmented information ecologies that intentionally obscure scientific facts regarding ecological emergencies. The commitment to stakeholders and growth economics makes social advertising conglomerates a significant barrier to a socio-ecological future. I provide a series of solutions to this problem at the institutional, research, policy, and individual levels and areas for future sustainability research.

Evolving Information Ecologies

2009 ◽  
pp. 255-273
Author(s):  
Hanne Westh Nicolajsen ◽  
Jorgen P. Bansler
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Multinational Firm ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Work Tasks ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Information Ecologies

This chapter examines how people in organizations appropriate new computer-based media, that is, how they adopt, reconfigure, and integrate advanced communication technologies such as groupware or desktop conferencing systems into their work practice. The chapter presents and analyzes findings from an in-depth field study of the adoption and use of a Web-based groupware application—a “virtual workspace”—in a large multinational firm. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the fact that people in modern organizations have plenty of media at their disposal and often combine old and new media to accomplish their work tasks. Furthermore, it highlights the crucial role of organizational communication genres in shaping how people adopt and use new media. The authors argue that understanding and facilitating the process of appropriation is the key to the successful introduction of new media in organizations.

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart - Preface

First Monday ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Nardi ◽  
Vicki O'Day
Keyword(s):  
Information Ecologies

scholarly journals BabyVeillance? Expecting Parents, Online Surveillance and the Cultural Specificity of Pregnancy Apps

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511770718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Barassi
Keyword(s):  
Personal Data ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Digital Surveillance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
Information Ecologies ◽  
Political Economic

The rapid proliferation of self-tracking pregnancy apps raises critical questions about the commodification and surveillance of personal data in family life while highlighting key transformations in the social experience of pregnancy. In the last 2 years, we have seen the emergence of significant research in the field. On one hand, scholars have highlighted the political economic dimension of these apps by showing how they relate to new practices of quantification of the self. On the other hand, they have focused on users’ experience and on the affective, pleasurable, and socially meaningful dimension of these technologies. Although insightful, current research has yet to consider the cultural specificity of these technologies. Drawing on a digital ethnography of the 10 most reviewed pregnancy apps among UK and US users at the beginning of 2016, the article will show not only that the information ecologies of pregnancy apps are extremely varied but also that users’ interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environments—which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativity—the article will argue that—in the study of infancy online—we need to develop a media anthropological approach and shed light on the cultural complexity of digital technologies while taking into account how users negotiate with digital surveillance and the quantification of the self.

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