This paper focuses on how digital innovation develops in ecologies of distributed heterogeneous actors with contesting logics, diverse technologies, and various forms of orchestrations. Drawing on the insights from emerging theories of digital innovation augmented by an institutional logics perspective, we examine a case study of how residential internet infrastructure was shaped over 20 years by the interplay of self-organized residential communities, corporate internet service providers (ISPs), and a state ISP. Our analysis of this case leads to the identification of four types of interactions that shape the trajectories of digital infrastructure development beyond direct actor interplays and competitive or collaborative relationships. We label these interactions symbiotic generative, symbiotic mutualistic, parasitic complementary, and parasitic competitive and explain the processes and conditions of their development and their innovation outcomes. Drawing on these findings, we develop a model of symbiotic and parasitic interactions shaping digital infrastructure development and identify key characteristics of the ecologies where these emerge. The case study and the model that emerged aim to contribute to the growing field of research on complex and nonlinear paths of digital innovation development constituted by the dynamics of its distributed agency. The article concludes by highlighting avenues for future research.

Despite increasing studies of information technology (IT) monitoring, our understanding of how IT-mediates relations between the watcher and watched remains limited in two areas. First, either traditional actor-centric frameworks assuming predefined watcher-watched relationships (e.g., panopticon or synopticon) are adopted or monitoring actors are removed to focus on data flows (e.g., dataveillance, assemblages, panspectron). Second, IT monitoring research predominantly assumes IT artifacts to be stable, bounded, designed objects, with prescribed uses which provides an oversimplified view of actor relationships. To redress these limitations, a conceptual framework of veillance applicable to a variety of possible IT or non-IT-mediated relationships between watcher and watched is developed. Using the framework, we conduct a conceptual review of the literature, identifying IT-enabled monitoring and transformations of actors, goals, mechanisms and foci and develop an action net model of IT veillance where IT artifacts are theorized as equivocal, distributable and open for diverse use, open to edits and contributions by unbounded sets of heterogenous actors characterized by diverse goals and capabilities. The action net of IT veillance is defined as a flexible decentralized interconnected web shaped by multidirectional watcher-watched relationships, enabling multiple dynamic goals and foci. Cumulative contributions by heterogenous participants organize and manipulate the net, having an impact through influencing dispositions, visibilities and the inclusion/exclusion of self and others. The model makes three important theoretical contributions to our understanding of IT monitoring of watchers and watched and their relationships. We discuss implications and avenues for future studies on IT veillance.

This paper examines how innovative uses of IT artifacts and their repurposing to fulfill emerging or unsatisfied user needs (bottom-up innovation, BUI) develop in community settings. Based on a longitudinal analysis of “HomeNets,” communities that developed residential internet access in Belarus over a 20-year period, we illustrate that the development of community BUI is driven not only by the needs of the innovating members but also by the interplay between the innovating members’ community context and technology and the interplay between the BUI technology and context. We demonstrate how these dynamics trigger community BUI development that goes beyond the needs and expectations of the innovating actors and impacts community evolution and long-term survival. Based on our findings, we develop a model of community BUI development. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, highlighting the role of technology and context in community BUI and its processual unfolding beyond the needs and intentions of the innovating members.

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This study examines what happens when an online community (OC) platform is shut down. In particular, it builds on recent interest from information science on everyday life information seeking, providing insights into the socioemotional roles enacted by users following community closure. A qualitative study is undertaken on 12 months of social media comments relating to the closure of an OC platform. We identify and discuss the socio-emotional information roles that manifest, and present a model of their relationship to different aspects of the closure. We make theoretical connections between the notion of socio-emotional information roles and both the information behavior and practice literature, as well as research on community and participant roles.Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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