Introduction to This Special Issue on Transnational HCI

Abstract

It is not surprising that HCI researchers are attracted to the role of technology in global processes as many of us already live inherently transnational lives. While the notion of global connectedness is hardly new, the issues that confront us are more than specific concerns for remote migration, distributed work, or developing nations. Rather, we argue that transnational HCI is a contemporary condition of the design and use of technological systems, both at home and abroad. This special issue of HumanComputer Interaction is dedicated to exploring how and why a transnational lens matters to the study, design, and development of computational systems. We consider this theoretical perspective in terms of both present technology use to construct and manage transnational relations and processes, and the possibilities such a lens opens for future research and design. The papers in this issue contribute to the field of HCI by bringing the principles developed in anthropology, sociology, and elsewhere to bear on the conversation in HCI, retooling them for our present context, while preserving the richness of their methodological orientation.Irina Shklovski (irsh@itu.dk, www.itu.dk/people/irsh) has a background in human-computer interaction and studies structural and substantive aspects of social relationships and networks to examine how people use technology in daily life and under conditions of strain; she is Associate Professor in Interaction Design and Digital Media and Communication research groups at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Janet Vertesi (jvertesi@princeton.edu, www.princeton.edu/sociology/faculty/vertesi) is a sociologist of science and technology with a background in Science and Technology Studies and Information Science; she studies large-scale, transnational collaborative systems on board NASA's spacecraft mission teams and is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Silvia Lindtner (lindtner@ics.uci.edu, www.ics.uci.edu/ lindtner) is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine and Fudan University. Drawing on ethnography and design methods, she studies cultures of technology production, with a particular focus on DIY maker culture and its intersections with manufacturing and tech entrepreneurialism in China. WHY TRANSNATIONAL HCI?You're packing your suitcase for a transcontinental flight from Los Angeles to Copenhagen. You switched to a smartphone years ago, but because it is locked to a local carrier that charges absurd roaming fees, you never travel anywhere without your old brick phone. It may have no data plan and an 8-year-old list of outdated contacts, but it also permits a colorful assortment of SIM cards to swap in and out depending on the country you land in. You take a break from packing and point your browser to a website local to your hometown that is 10 years in your past and thousands of miles away in a different country. You check the weather and find out about the latest city council decisions, then write a post on the local bulletin boa...

The Best of Both Worlds? Online Ties and the Alternating Use of Social Network Sites in the Context of Migration

“…The theme of culture, migration and technology, however, is set to grow and intensify. As recent studies have shown, cross-cultural and transnational issues in technology use are gaining in prominence [9,10,32,35]. In some ways, it may be reassuring that users around the globe are not heading straight for a uniform, homogenous global village.…”

“…Depending on the intercultural context, users may have to use more than one particular SNS and maintain several online presences in order to stay in touch with back home and to embrace a new social environment. The management of such hybrid communities has recently been identified as one of the main challenges in a transnational perspective on Human-Computer Interaction [9], and early evidence suggests that users are sensitive to the cultural context suggested by a particular SNS [10,32]. We extend this perspective by proposing that alternating SNS use may be a necessity as well as a given for migrants.…”

“…Information technology generally has helped migrants to stay connected to their geographical origins [4][5][6][7][8], but to date little is known about SNS use and migration. Recent work on transnational Human-Computer Interaction [9] and cross-cultural SNS use [10] has highlighted the relevance of long-distance technologies for particular user groups. SNS have famously been shown to enable the accumulation and consolidation of social capital [11,12], in particular for users moving to a different location.…”

Translocality in Global Software Development: the Dark Side of Global Agile

“…Translocality as analytical lens is based within the research on transnational approaches for HCI. Transnational HCI is a research agenda, which seeks to emphasize certain aspects of the globalized world and the contemporary conditions by which ICT enables and constrains people's practices in ways fundamental to design and use of technologies (Shklovski, Vertesi et al 2014). Transnational HCI research provides a vocabulary and an agenda, which place studies of 'the global' in new ways, by rephrasing certain key concepts, as well as replacing commonly held perspectives and challenging basic assumptions about the impact of ICT in a globalized world.…”

“…It provides us with a new analytical frame, which can help us re-think the ways in which we approach our investigations of global work. The first shift in our analytical understanding is the shift that replaces the dichotomy of global/local with the concept of translocal (Shklovski, Vertesi et al 2014). The issue with the global/local dichotomy is that it assumes that, we can distinguish between what is local and what is global, while in reality cultural practice will always be experienced from a certain perspective, thus the global is experienced and enacted through the local circumstances.…”