Designing a Discipline: Social Informatics Revisited

摘要

The traditional definition of Social Informatics, based on the quartet of "design, implementation, use, consequences", is excessively action-oriented. It is part of a Social Informatics universe, though it hardly represents the centre of it as it lacks all the components that precede the action like context generating (the embedment of informatics issues into the given problem environments, framing, scanning, mapping), way of thinking, the explanation of certain phenomena, analysis and the issue of professional identity. All this fundamentally determine the way we deal with non-technical questions related to information tools. Nevertheless, this aspect has usually been ignored. The focus point of our attention has been permanently directed at scientific reflection to current practical challenges. Using the experience gained from Social Informatics courses held in the Technical University of Budapest since 1991, we seek to contribute to the discourse with three aspects:1. Channeling the Perception2. Building an identity environment3. Mapping the topic.