Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment

Bowker, Geoffrey C.; Baker, Karen S.; Millerand, Florence; Ribes, David

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9789-8_5

Cited by 415 publications

(369 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

333

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…26,35]. A shared infrastructure, or in our case, a shared information infrastructure, is a key component and operational facility of such a commons [1,9,44]. Such an infrastructure provides a medium for sharing resources of common interest (e.g., F/OSS data sets, domain models, tools for processing data in F/OSS repositories, research pre-prints and publications), common-pool resources (F/OSS portals like SourceForge [55]), and public goods (scientific knowledge, Internet access and connectivity).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main objective of a research infrastructure that collects, aggregates, organizes, and offer data analysis services is to address community-wide resource issues in community-specific way [1,58]. For F/OSS research, the objective is to improve the collective productivity of software research by lowering the access cost and effort for data that will address the critical questions of software development research.…”

Section: Addressing Issues With Empirical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the broadest approaches to common infrastructure is the use of representation standards [1,59] as meta-data. Such standards would move some issues of cross-source data normalization forward in the process that produces F/OSS projects' information.…”

Section: Metadata and Meta-modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such arrangements provide powerful intrinsic means of discovering connections among research themes and ideas, as they are linked through both citation, through common or related uses of underlying data, and through associations among concepts. Similar efforts are underway in many other sciences (e.g., [1,58]). Networks of literature and data created in this way, with automated support, can reduce cognitive complexity, establish collocation of concepts and findings, and establish/maintain social organization within and across F/OSS projects.…”

Section: Integratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We should do further research on what other communities have done to organize research data. For example, many collections of social science data are maintained around the world 1 . We should use the experiences of these projects as a basis for the F/OSS research infrastructure.…”

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Towards a Global Research Infrastructure for Multidisciplinary Study of Free/Open Source Software Development

Gasser

Scacchi

2008

IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) research community is growing across and within multiple disciplines. This community faces a new and unusual situation. The traditional difficulties of gathering enough empirical data have been replaced by issues of dealing with enormous amounts of freely available public data from many disparate sources (online discussion forums, source code directories, bug reports, OSS Web portals, etc.). Consequently, these data are being discovered, gathered, analyzed, and used to support multidisciplinary research. However at present, no means exist for assembling these data under common access points and frameworks for comparative, longitudinal, and collaborative research across disciplines. Gathering and maintaining large F/OSS data collections reliably and making them usable present several research challenges. For example, current projects usually rely on direct access to, and mining of raw data from groups that generate it, and both of these methods require unique effort for each new corpus, or even for updating existing corpora. In this paper, we identify several needs and critical factors in F/OSS empirical research across disciplines, and suggest recommendations for design of a global research infrastructure for multi-disciplinary research into F/OSS development.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Addressing Issues With Empirical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Metadata and Meta-modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Towards a Global Research Infrastructure for Multidisciplinary Study of Free/Open Source Software Development

Gasser

Scacchi

2008

IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Science, Technology, and Society Studies

Boczkowski¹,

Crooks

Lievrouw

et al. 2016

The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This entry examines contemporary scholarship on media and information technologies at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The term “media and information technologies” is used to bring together a variety of research frameworks that seek to capture symbolic, social, cultural, or political aspects of technology. This body of work emphasizes broad historical scope, infrastructural dimensions, and the distinctive interplay of materiality with symbolic content and meaning. The discussion is organized around three key conceptual bridges: prevailing notions about causality in technology–society relationships; the process of technology development; and the social consequences of technological change. The entry concludes by considering some broader implications of the contemporary landscape of research at the intersection of STS and communication studies for continued intellectual dialogue between the two fields.

show abstract

Metadata, infrastructure, and computer‐mediated communication in historical perspective

Fidler

Acker

2016

Asso for Info Science & Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we describe the creation and use of metadata on the early Arpanet as part of normal network function. By using the Arpanet Host-Host Protocol and its sockets as an entry point for studying the generation of metadata, we show that the development and function of key Arpanet infrastructure can be studied by examining the creation and stabilization of metadata. More specifically, we use the Host-Host Protocol's sockets as an example of something that, at the level of the network, functions as both network infrastructure and metadata simultaneously. By presenting the function of sockets in tandem with an overview of the Host-Host Protocol, we argue for the further integrated study of infrastructure and metadata. Finally, we reintroduce the concept of infradata to refer specifically to data that locate data throughout an infrastructure and are required by the infrastructure to function, separating them from established and stabilized standards. We argue for the future application of infradata as a concept for the study of histories and political economies of networks, bridging the largely library and information science (LIS) study of metadata with the largely science and technology studies (STS) domain of infrastructure.

show abstract

Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in a Networked Environment

Cited by 415 publications

References 36 publications

Towards a Global Research Infrastructure for Multidisciplinary Study of Free/Open Source Software Development

Towards a Global Research Infrastructure for Multidisciplinary Study of Free/Open Source Software Development

Science, Technology, and Society Studies

Metadata, infrastructure, and computer‐mediated communication in historical perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About