1. What is Social Informatics (SI)?

 SI is a multi-disciplinary perspective
 SI is the study of information and communication tools in cultural or institutional
context.
 SI is an inter-disciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information
technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural
context.

a. Organizational informatics(OI)
 It is about those SI analysis constrained within organizations, where the primary
participants are located with identifiable organizations.

2. Define the following terms of social informatics theoretical frameworks (SI research).
a. The Normative orientation
 Refers to the research that aims to recommend alternatives for professionals who
design, implement, use, or develop policy about ICTs.
 This type of research has an explicit goal of influencing practice by providing empirical
evidence illustrating the varied outcomes that occur as people work with ICTs in a wide
range of organizational and social contexts.

b. The Analytical orientation

 Refers to the studies that develop theories about ICTs in institutional and cultural
context or to empirical studies that are organized to contribute to such theorizing.
 This type of research seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of how evolution of
ICT use in a particular setting can be generalized to other settings.
E.g. Use of online application & registration at UB

c. The Critical orientation

 Refers to examining ICTs from perspectives that do not automatically adopt the goals
and beliefs of the groups that commission, design or implement specific ICTs.
 It encourages information professionals and researchers to examine ICT from multiple
perspective and examine possible “failure modes” and service losses aswell as idealized
expectations of routine use.
E.g. A law firm can develop an expert system that would completely automate the task
of coding documents used as evidence in civil litigation.

3. What is the difference between social informatics and social computing?

 Social informatics is the study information and communication tools in cultural or
institutional contexts, while
 Social computing refers to systems that support the gathering, representation,
processing, use, and dissemination of information that is distributed across social
collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, and markets.
4. Explain the difference between the following social informatics theoretical frameworks (SI
Theories)
a. Rawlsianist theory (RT)
 The concept is well reflected in the Theories of a Just Society by the Philosopher John
Rawls.
 The RT theory takes a more holistic approach
E.g. it examines the nature of social arrangements of society rather than the acts of the
individual in the society acts.

b. Universalist Theories (UTs)

 UT holds the inherent features of an action that make it right or wrong
 UT acknowledges that the moral worth of an action cannot be dependent upon the
outcome because these outcomes are so indefinite and uncertain at the time the decision
to act is made; instead, the moral worth of an action had to depend upon the intentions
of the person making the decision.

c. The Consequentialist Theories (CTs)

 CTs focus on the outcomes of actions rather than a person’s intentions.
 In CT utilitarianism, emphasizes creating the maximum benefits for the largest number
of people for the least amount of damages.

5. Briefly explain the following contexts of ethical issues of social informatics as relates to
specific information technology applications.

a. Context-Aware Computing- as in mobile computing and networks.

 Proximate Selection: is a user interface technique (UI) where the located-objects that are
nearby are emphasized or otherwise made easier to select

 Automatic Contextual Reconfiguration: is the process of adding new components,

removing existing components e.g. typically components are servers and connections are
their communication channels to clients.

 Contextual Information and Commands: Aim to exploit this fact & Queries on contextual
information can produce different results according to the context in which they are
delivered.

 Context-Triggered: Are simple IF-THEN rules used to specify how Context-aware Systems
should adapt
 b. Internet- constitutes a number of apps that have challenges of ethical issues.
 Communication forum e.g. e-mail, chats, Skype, linkedin etc. that can portray cultural, legal
and traditional as pertains to different social norms of information use.
 Social network platforms e.g. Facebook, YouTube, twitter, Instagram, etc. that create a
virtual world of virtual communities has various ethical issues

c. Privacy- 3 major issues arise

 User- morality
 Information Management within the system
 Confidentiality

6. From the perspective of social informatics, state three ways of how computing and digital
technology has affected society?
 Digital technology allows us to store, organize and retrieve massive amounts of data
 Digital technology allows anybody to communicate with thousands or millions of people at
a time
 Technology forces us to update our moral guidelines constantly! We must decide if
problems are morally bad, good, or neutral based on our current (possibly out-of-date)
moral guidelines

7. State the major social informatics ethical issues facing Information Technology.
 Personal Privacy
 Access Right
 Harmful Actions
 Patents
 Copyright
 Trade Secrets
 Liability
 Piracy

8. Ethical issues of specific IT application systems in SI

 Socio-technical Informatics Systems (SIS) proves understanding of the unity of software
including the graphical user interface (GUI), the hardware, embedded systems for control
and regulation of peripherally technical processes for communication and networking with
other SIS and, the associated social action system of people who are interacting with the
technical part of the SIS and with each other.
 The technical part of an IS; is particularly connected with its social part, the system’s
context, through (HCI) and further direct or indirect technical functionalities of the IS.
These activities in turn affect the interaction of humans with the technical part of the
system and the interaction between people e.g. chats, email, LMS policies etc.
9. A more formal definition of social informatics is that “it is the interdisciplinary study of the
design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their
interaction with institutional and cultural contexts”; however social informatics studies are
scattered in the journals of several different fields, each of these fields uses somewhat different
nomenclature. What are the four fields in which social informatics is scattered in?
 Unfortunately, social informatics studies are scattered in the journals of several different
fields, including computer science, information systems, information science and some
social sciences.

10. Discuss two ethical issues with examples caused by social network platforms.
 Social network platforms, Facebook, YouTube, twitter, Instagram, etc. that create a virtual
world of virtual communities has various ethical issues e.g.
i. Consent –e.g. data sharing and storage
ii. Trust between anonyms- all relationships build on trust, hence moral relationship
cannot exist without trust & trust is an ethnical necessity in any community
including virtual community

11. Discuss with an example Consequentialist Theories (CTs) and Universalist Theories [UTs]
theoretical frameworks in relation to IT.
 The Consequentialist Theories (CTs) - Consequentialist theories focus on the outcomes
of actions rather than a person’s intentions. In CT theory one well-known formulation,
called utilitarianism, emphasizes creating the maximum benefits for the largest number of
people, while incurring the least amount of damages or harm.
 The Universalist Theories (UTs)-Universalist ethical theories hold the inherent features of
an action make it right or wrong. UT acknowledges that the moral worth of an action
cannot be dependent upon the outcome because these outcomes are so indefinite and
uncertain at the time the decision to act is made

12. Social informatics research involves three orientations, although these approaches may be
combined in any specific study. Name and clearly distinguish between two of them
 The normative orientation refers to research that aims to recommend alternatives for
professionals who design, implement, use, or develop policy about ICTs. This type of
research has an explicit goal of influencing practice by providing empirical evidence
illustrating the varied outcomes that occur as people work with ICTs in a wide range of
organizational and social contexts. For example, much of the work in participatory design
focuses on identifying the nuance in ways that users come to understand and adapt how
they work through complex sociotechnical relationships
 The analytical orientation refers to studies that develop theories about ICTs in institutional
and cultural contexts or to empirical studies that are organized to contribute to such
theorizing. This type of research seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the
evolution of ICT use in a particular setting can be generalized to other ICTs and other
settings e.g. use of online application & registration at UB.
  The critical orientation refers to examining ICTs from perspectives that do not
automatically (uncritically) adopt the goals and beliefs of the groups that commission,
design, or implement specific ICTs. It encourages information professionals and
researchers to examine ICTs from multiple perspectives (such as the various people who
use them in different contexts, as well as people who design, implement or maintain them)
and to examine possible “failure modes” and service losses, as well as idealized
expectations of routine use; e.g. a law firm can develop an expert system that would
completely automate the task of coding documents used as evidence in civil litigation.

13. The government of Botswana would like you to educate the Parliament and the House of Chiefs
on the various social, cultural and organizational issues raised by extensive computerization of the
society, as well as their implications. Based on the issues raised, the government will also
welcome any useful suggestions from you that can guide the decision makers on IT deployment in
the country. Address the request of the government by identifying and briefly commenting on
four areas of social controversies in IT deployment in a country like Botswana.
i. Worklife.
ii. Class divisions in society.
iii. Human safety and critical computer systems -
iv. Democratization.
v. Employment.
vi. Education.
vii. Gender biases.
viii. Worker health and productivity concerns
ix. Computer literacy.
x. Privacy and Encryption
xi. Scholarship.
xii. Human rights (e.g. privacy) and Social Control.
xiii. Social controversies surrounding the specific IT artefacts and their applications –
e.g. Virtual reality, Artificial Intelligence, Software engineering
xiv. Organisational IT deployment politics versus rational decision making

14. What is a virtual community? Give three examples of virtual communities on a social network
platform.
 VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES: Online communities whose members interact and
communicate online via the internet platforms, and normally the virtual community has
invisible members/ friends and those who wish to be part of these communities become
members via specific sites.
 Virtual communities exist on various internet platforms e.g. social network forums suchas;
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter chat rooms
 15. Write two examples under each, social informatics theoretical underpinnings, technological
infrastructure and applications of social computing?
Applications
 Online communications: blog, wikis, social network, podcasts, collaborating, bookmarking,
social tagging,
 Business &Public sector: recommendation, forecasting, registration, decision making
analysis, e-business, commerce, e-govt,
 Interactive entertainment: gaming, storytelling, animations, edutainment, training
 Technological Infrastructure
 Web, d/base, multimedia, agent, software engineering
 Theoretical underpinnings
 Social psychology, communication & HCI theories, social network analysis, anthropology,
organizational theory, sociology, computer theory