Towards a theory of the digital information environment
		Howard Rosenbaum Internet: hrosenba@indiana.edu Phone: 812.855.3250 Fax: 812.855.6166	School of Library and Information Science Main Library 012 Indiana University Bloomington, IN USA 47405-1801

© 1999 and Rosenbaum

Use this table to navigate through the paper:

Abstract

Introduction

Importance of the social context

The digital information environment

Conclusions

Bibliography

Abstract

When thinking about how people design, implement, and use information and communication technologies (ICTs) and of the ways in which people use digital information, many researchers attribute an important role to the "social context." This paper argues that the context, while clearly important, is not well understood, particularly in terms of its relationship to ICTs, people, and their information behaviors. It proposes a set of elements that can be taken to constitute the social context of ICTs and digital information. This "digital information environment," can be useful in guiding research into the structure the social context and its influences on the ways in which people in different social and organizational settings use ICTs and digital information.

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Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are assuming greater importance in many peoples' work and personal lives. Increasing amounts of time are spend using these technologies to create or acquire, manipulate, use, and disseminate digital information. Researchers in a number of disciplines have been studying the growing significance of ICTs and digital information in peoples' work and play under such rubrics as "social impacts of computing," "computer-mediated communication," and, lately, "social informatics" (Kling, 1999; Kling, Rosenbaum, and Hert, 1998; p. 1048). Although the findings of these studies have varied widely, one common thread that runs through this body of work is that ICTs and their uses cannot be adequately understood without considering the social and organizational contexts in which they are embedded.

This paper begins with the assertion that this context is not well understood either in terms of its constituent elements or its roles in "shaping" what occurs within it. It attempts to account, in theoretical terms, for the social contexts within which ICTs are designed, implemented, and used and within which digital information is generated, sought for, acquired, evaluated, organized, disseminated, and used. Requirements of space prohibit a full treatment of this topic, so the main goal of this paper is to provide an outline of a theoretical framework that can be used to understand the roles of the social context across the lifecycle of ICTs and digital information. This is important because such a framework can be used to ground empirical research into the social contexts of ICTs and digital information and will help in understanding how the context affects the design and use of ICTs and the use of digital information. It will also help us understand how the context is affected by the actions of people as they use ICTs and digital nformation within it.

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Importance of the social context

When thinking about the growing ubiquity of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in our work and personal lives, many researchers assume that ICTs, and the digital information that passes through them, are always embedded in social contexts of design, implementation, and use. Focusing on organizational contexts, they further assume that peoples' work practices are becoming increasingly intertwined with the ICTs that support these activities in ways that are complex and difficult, although important, to understand. For example, studies have shown that people's work lives are affected in significant ways, both positively and negatively, by the introduction of ICTs into their work places (Walsham, 1998; Iocono and Kling, 1996; Orlikowski, Yates, Okamura, and Fujimoto, 1995; Clement, 1994; Kling and Jewett, 1994, Orlikowski, 1992, 1991; Barley, 1986). These studies have also shown that outcomes of ICT implementation and use in organizations are difficult to predict and that the "contextually -dependent nature of ICTs suggests that similar ICTs can have different outcomes in different situations" (Kling, et al, in press). In fact, contradictory effects of ICT use seem to be the norm and there have been calls for the development of theoretical models that can take this into account (Robey, 1997). It is therefore reasonable to expect that a similar range of paradoxical effects will be seen as computing and networking technologies bring ICTs and digital information into other social contexts, notably the schools and the home.

How then can the variable and contradictory effects of ICT and digital information use in social and organizational settings best be accounted for? The technological and social determinisms that have been used to characterize the relationship between technologies and the people who use them are not useful in this task (Kling, 1994; Bloomfield and Coombs, 1992). Explanations based on metaphors of direct effects, regardless of the direction of the effects, limit our understanding of the interactions between technology and society. Researchers are instead turning their attention to the social (and organizational) context as a key component in understanding the relationships between people, ICTs and digital information, and the organizational and other social settings in which these relationships are enacted.

The increasing importance of the social context also opens the door to alternatives, such as the assumption that technology and society are in a relationship of mutual shaping, a "seamless web" (Pinch and Bijker, 1994; 10) in which technologies are "gradually constructed or deconstructed in the social interactions of relevant social groups" (Bijker 1993; 119). Researchers in many different disciplines are using this assumption as they explore the ways in which ICTs and other technologies constrain and enable the actions of those who design and use them and the ways in which these technologies are shaped by the social and organizational contexts in which they are designed and used (Kling, 1999, 1996; Morgan and Lowry, 1999; Bowker, Star, Turner, and Gasser, 1997; Kling and Star, 1997; Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). A clear and fundamental theme of this work, much of which is found in the field of social informatics, is that the "context matters." These contexts, whether in organizations, schools or the home, are important to consider because, according to Kling (1999):

One key idea of social informatics research is that the "social context" of information technology development and use plays a significant role in influencing the ways that people use information and technologies, and thus influences their consequences for work, organizations, and other social relationships.

But what is this social context of ICTs and digital information? How can it best be described? How can the social context of ICTs and digital information be accounted for theoretically? What are the constituent parts of this context that make a difference in the life-cycles of both ICTs and digital information and in the information behaviors of the people who use them? What are the implications of a framework which accounts for the social and organizational contexts in which ICTs and digital information are always embedded, from their creation and design to their acquisition, evaluation, dissemination, and use? These are questions that have currency in information science and are the foci of this paper.

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The digital information environment

How can the concept of the social context of ICTs and digital information be unpacked and described? First, what is a context? How closely related are the concepts of contexts and environments? Merriam-Webster Online (1999) defines a context as "the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs" and a related term, environment, as "the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded." In what follows, the terms will be considered synonymous and the latter will be used. The theoretical tasks then are to describe the conditions and circumstances that surround ICTs, digital information and the people who use them and to clarify their interrelationships. The initial focus will be on those conditions and circumstances in the social context that are involved in people's use of ICTs and digital information and which seem to make a difference in their information behaviors. This set of conditions and circumstances will be called the "digital information environment."

The digital information environment (IE) is the social context within which ICTs are designed, implemented and used and digital information is created, accessed, manipulated, stored, disseminated, and used. It is a subset of the information environment and has similar elements. Although it is a social space, as is the information environment, it is more structured because of the explicit work done by people to create, recreate, maintain, and change it; examples include interface and web page design, two activities which add a degree of rigidity to the digital IE. Understanding the digital IE is a key to understanding how people work, play, and interact as they use ICTs and digital information.

The information environment (Rosenbaum, 1999; 1996; 1993) is a concept which accounts for the social context of information, information systems, and their uses by decomposing it into its constituent and generic (cross situational) parts. The IE builds on the work of Giddens (1984), which provides a bridge between the social environment and the social actions that take place within it, and of Taylor (1986, 1991), which offers a way to think about the social environment in "information terms" (Taylor, 1986; 220). Within the social environment can be found the information environment, one portion of which is the digital IE, which inherits qualities of these larger environments. In functional terms, the digital IE can (Taylor, 1991; 218):

(a) affect the flow and use of [digital] information messages into, within, and out of any defined entity; and (b) determine the criteria by which the value of [these] messages will be judged.

The digital IE is dynamic and changes over time in response to both the presence of new information and the actions and interactions of the people within it. It is a concept that has its greatest impact at group levels and is the context within which (Taylor, 1986; 15):

Tasks and problems are generated...The structure of the environment, in many complex ways, determines what information is acceptable (i.e., has value) for clarification, solution, or alteration of a problem, or for the accomplishment of a task. A message is then given value by a 'user' who sees its potential 'usefulness' because he or she is in a particular environment and can relate the message to the problems and tasks of the environment.

The components of the digital IE that make a difference include rules and resources, defined in structurational terms, typical problems, their typical resolutions, and socio-cultural features of the setting. The rules and resources affect information flow and ICT use in the organization or other social setting and hold potential criteria used to value information. The digital IE is a source of the typical information-based problems faced by people in social and organizational settings as they design and use ICTs and digital information, and of the features of the acceptable resolutions to those problems. In discussing the components of the digital IE, examples will be drawn from the domain of electronic commerce, a particularly interesting domain because many of the rules are emerging and are not yet clear and the resources are continually evolving.

The first two components, rules and resources, constitute the basic structure of the digital IE and are used together as people engage in social interaction (Giddens, 1979; 45), in this case information behaviors. Rules are generalizable procedures or techniques that are be used to form, sustain, change, terminate, and recreate information behaviors. They are typically organized in sets and are used by people as they act and interact; rules constitute and regulate shared meanings and actions. There are two broad categories of rules in the digital IE. Sets of technical rules constrain and enable people as they use ICTs to engage in interactions in the digital IE. Some of these rules are instantiated in the hardware and software that support the infrastructure of electronic networks. For example, the design of web-based storefronts for ecommerce is constrained by the ways in which designers use available markup and programming languages and development and authoring software (which are resources). HTML is a notoriously and intentionally inflexible language that greatly limits what designers can do. Design is also affected by the characteristics of hardware; many designers chafe at the constraint of having to develop web pages for 15" monitors. At the same time, the ease with which the technical rules of the HTML and web page design can be grasped have greatly expanded the ability of people to open such storefronts and engage in ecommerce.

There are also sets of social rules that are used as people interact in the digital IE. In ecommerce, these rules guide and influence the ways in which people design and use ecommerce sites. On the design side, one example is the move towards "mass customization," the ideal of which is to develop a web site that presents itself differently to different types of users. Another is the trend towards streamlining the shopping experience on a site to make it as easy as possible for a browser to become a purchaser, such as "one-click" purchasing. On the consumer side, there are also social rules that influence information behaviors. When browsing at an online storefront, users do not like to scroll vertically and don't want to read many screens of text on a page. They want to find information about the products in which they are interested quickly and easily, which has implications for the creation of content, page layout, and the design of finding tools and navigation schemes.

Resource are social or material elements of the setting that are used by people as they engage in information behaviors. In the digital IE, two important resources are ICTs and digital information; both are drawn upon routinely by people as they engage in information behaviors. Allocative resources allow command over objects and processes and include material elements and artifacts in the social environment and the means to work with and produce them. The webmaster/mistress can use the web server - the hardware and software with which the web site is served - as an allocative resource. Authoritative resources allow control over people and include control over the organization of social time and space. The head of the web design team can schedule team members' time - which is an authoritative resource. Resources are drawn upon and used in conjunction with the rule sets with which they are intertwined and, when they are drawn upon in interaction, they are bases of power in the digital IE.

A problematic situation is some portion of a person's experience that is attended to and given boundaries by a person, who labels it as a single entity that requires attention and possible action. The list of problems in the digital IE are legion, especially when considering ecommerce. There are technical problems of slow page downloads, poor navigation, "link rot," confusing information architecture, and the need for plug-ins, to name a few. A recent study claimed that 67% of people who placed items in ecommerce shopping carts did not complete the transaction because of problems on the web site (Net Effect Systems, 1999). There are social problems such as a lack of a clear privacy statement, customer worries about security, and the general dislike of banner advertising.

A problem resolution occurs when that portion of the persons' experience that gave rise to the problematic situation no longer requires attention and action. Acceptable technical resolutions involve designer's attempts to streamline the web site through such techniques as minimizing the size of graphic files, judiciously using programming and scripting on pages, developing a usable navigation scheme, and designing for general accessibility. Acceptable social resolutions include providing links to company privacy and security policies on the front page of the site (and often on every page), displaying the logo of a trusted third party such as TRUSTe, providing a way for people to easily abandon a transaction right up to the moment when they click on the order button, and providing multiple customer service options to support the customer after the sale is made.

Socio-cultural features of the setting affect the ways in which people action and interaction within it. Social features in the digital IE include the social groups to which people belong. In an organization, social groups may form as workgroups, teams (Ciborra, 1996; Tyre and Orlikowski, 1994) or communities of practice (Brown and Duguid, 1991). In a social setting, people may belong to local communities or other groups based on mutual interest. In these grouping, members will collectively define and share attitudes and beliefs about information, such as understandings of high and low quality information, trusted sources and means by which information can be evaluated and valued. These shared beliefs form the cultural or normative component of the digital IE which, as described by Schein (1985; 9) include:

a pattern of basic assumptions that a ... group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems

In ecommerce, examples of socio-cultural features include the belief that people and organizations on the web should "give something back," so many ecommerce site have free downloads of information products such as software and white papers. There are also strong beliefs about individual security and privacy that are shaping the policies that ecommerce firms use.

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Conclusions

This brief description of the main components of the digital information environment is intended to be suggestive and not exhaustive. The main purpose of this discussion has been to sketch an outline of a framework that can be used account theoretically for the social environment of ICTs and digital information and its roles across the lifecycle of ICTs and digital information. Examples drawn from the domain of ecommerce were used to illustrate the richness of this approach to the concept of the social context. This is important because such a framework can be used to ground empirical research into the digital IEs of ICTs and digital information and will help in understanding how this environment affects he design and use of ICTs and the creation, dissemination and use of digital information. It will also help us understand how the context is affected by the actions of people as they use ICTs and digital information within it (see Table 1: Components of the digital information environment).

Table 1: Components of the digital information environment

ICTs and digital information are resources in the digital information environment that are drawn upon and used as people engage in information behaviors. Along with rules, they form the structure of the digital IE. The digital IE is a subset of the more general IE, which itself falls within the larger social environment (or context). As people interact and engage in the routine social practices that make up much of a normal day, they draw upon the structural elements (rules and resources) of the social environment in which they find themselves. An often unintended consequence of their interactions is that these structural elements are reproduced and, in some instances, changed. This is structuration (Giddens, 1984). In information terms, as people engage in information behaviors, they draw upon the rules and resources of the digital IE, which make their interactions possible and are reproduced and sometimes changed as a consequence of their actions and interactions. As the digital IE is reproduced in action and interaction, it constrains and enables individual and group action.(see Figure 1: Structuration and the digital information environment

Figure 1: Structuration and the digital information environment

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