Rethinking the Social Construction of Technology through ‘Following the Actors’: A Reappraisal of Technological Frames

Abstract

In this paper, I summarize case study research on an information system called Connected Kids. This case study was guided by an approach to technology studies called the ‘Social construction of technology’ or SCOT Pinch and Bijker (1984). In discussing Connected Kids, I illustrate many of SCOT's main tenents, e.g. the various social interactions that surround and influence technology design. As the paper progresses, however, I focus on one concept in particular, that being SCOT's notion of a ‘technological frame,’ which is used as a catch-all concept for handling the structural influences in technology design. My discussion and illustration of this concept shows that – whilst technological frames help an analyst understand, in general terms, the role structure(s) play in shaping technology – the ‘heterogeneity’ of technological frames can cloak the more obvious, and potentially most influential, forces at work in technology design. In the case of Connected kids, the role of resources, and which actors had access to these resources, was critical in pointing Connected Kids down a particular trajectory. Further, this discovery emerged from listening carefully to respondents’ comments on the role of resources in their community. These comments, and my own observations on how resource-access propelled certain actors into a leadership position, led to my developing an alternative method for analyzing technological frames. The implications of this analysis are then discussed within the context of SCOT and technology studies more generally.

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“…Closure and stabilisation then occur when a dominant way of using the technology stabilises and ' conflicts are resolved and the artefact no longer poses a problem to any relevant social group' (Klein & Kleinman 2002: 30). As Prell (2009) notes there are a number of ways this can be achieved with the potential for two or more groups to compete over the use of a particular technology after closure has occured. For SCOT, this all takes place within a 'wider context' consisting of the 'wider sociocultural and political milieu in which artefact development takes place' (Klein & Kleinman 2002: 30).…”

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“…In order to further understand the social dynamics around wireless technology, I now draw on an extended version of the Social Construction of Technology (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987;MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985;Prell, 2009;Klein and Kleinman, 2002). SCOT suggests an anthropological-historical approach to the study of technological development, asking how technology is made and how it is used: a process of unboxing technologies that is alternative to technological determinism.…”

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“…Sobreperez (2008) suggests further preconditions for frame incongruence such as enforced proceduralisation, and cultural issues. A more recent study (Prell 2009) develops a useful alternative method for analyzing technological frames by identifying congruent or differing goals, problems and strategies as well as tacit knowledge and key material resources, reverting back to the original frame dimensions as outlined by Bijker (1993) . Davidson's (2002) review of technological frames theory suggests that most applications of theory fail to investigate; the process of 'framing'; the cultural and institutional foundations of frames; and the characteristics and consequences of frame structure.…”

“…Secondly there is an underlying assumption that group members already in a group identified socially, or in a work context, will share technological frames. For example, Ferneley and Sobreperez (2006) identify managers, firefighters and statisticians, Lankshear, Ettorre and Mason (2005) identify nurses and doctors and Prell (2009) identifies academics and professors, youth service workers, and students.…”