What is Social Informatics?

The invention of the World Wide Web has led to an unprecedented increase in the role and significance of information technology in our personal and social lives. Followed by the rise of social media, mobile technology and the advent of Big Data and Data Science, accompanied by the business models of surveillance capitalism that base on human attention as a form of capital, the role of the Information System in our lives today is undeniable. Today, it is a truism to say that information technology has a social dimension and a social impact – it is enough to consider such applications as Facebook, YouTube, or Wikipedia. Similarly, information technology impacts our personal lives and our psychological well-being. 

On the other hand, the Information System bases entirely on the activities, input and work of its users. The Web’s content has been built by people, either by individual users (like Wikipedia or YouTube, or any other Web2.0 platform) or institutions. Human attention and time finance Google and Facebook. The Information System cannot exist without the Social System. 

Social Informatics recognizes this interdependence. Information technology has reshaped the way we are doing business, working, learning, playing, and making friends or enemies. The Information System senses what is going on in the Social System, what are our interests, likes and dislikes, political opinions, or beliefs. Based on this information, the Information System can influence our individual and social behavior, from our personal or commercial choices to our political leanings.

This means that technology cannot be neutral. Information technologies are either designed to have a social impact – usually by capturing human attention for an economic benefit – or influence our psychological and social situation and behavior as a side effect. Often, these side effects are harmful and unwanted. 

Social Informatics should aim at designing technologies and methods that will minimize such unwanted side effects. However, this is a minimalistic goal. Rather than that, Social Informatics should aim to understand, model and operationalize human values and social goals, such as trust or fairness, as well as fundamental concepts, such as credibility or empathy. Social Informatics can help design Information Systems that take into account human strengths and weaknesses, based on a better understanding of cognitive processes and abilities (including biases and cognitive limitations). 

To summarize: Social Informatics can be defined as an area of informatics that attempts to design methods to improve the Information System by applying social concepts, or by using knowledge or information about social phenomena, as well as psychological or cognitive foundations of human behavior. 
Research in Social Informatics has already quite a bit of history. It could be dated back to the early work of Robert Kling (1996), which was, however, mostly focused on the social effects of information technology, rather than on designing information technology. Seminal articles of Jon Kleinberg (2008) or Tim Berners-Lee (2008) have heralded a new perspective of the discipline. The first international conference on Social Informatics took place in 2010. Since then, the field has developed significantly, involving not only several universities and research groups in informatics, but also multidisciplinary researchers and technologists, such as associated with the Center for Humane Technology (2013).