[Asis-l] Call for papers: thematic issue of Information Research - Materiality and social dynamics of information infrastructures and learning

[Ola Pilerot]

Call for papers: thematic issue of Information Research
Information Research (www.informationr.net/ir/) is an open access,
international, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, dedicated to making
accessible the results of research across a wide range of
information-related disciplines. 


MATERIALITY AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURES AND
LEARNING 
This thematic issue on the “Materiality and social dynamics of
information infrastructures and learning” aims to widen the empirical
base and further the theoretical framing of information infrastructures
and their relations to learning processes, conditions and outcomes in
various contexts. Although information infrastructures are not
necessarily designed and developed for formal learning purposes, they
can nonetheless be seen to support, enable or constrain learning in both
foreseeable and unforeseen ways from a view on learning as mediated by
all sorts of human engagement with tools and artefacts. This focus,
consequently, presupposes an understanding of information
infrastructures as material artefacts constructed in, and constructing,
the social practices and (prod)user activities of which they are part.
Common denominators for the sort of infrastructures that we particularly
wish to focus on are that they structure some form of information and
are, in most cases, digital. Examples include (digital) libraries;
social media; search engines; databases, repositories and document
collections; encyclopaedias; visualisation tools; virtual learning
platforms, publishing houses, and MOOCs.
For this thematic issue, we encourage an open approach to how
socio-material perspectives on information infrastructures and their
relations to learning processes, conditions and outcomes can be studied
and interpreted. We explicitly seek and encourage contributions of
researchers from different fields including library and information
science, learning/educational sciences and organization studies, in
order to inspire new ideas and enable a fruitful conversation across
disciplinary borders. Furthermore, individual conceptualisations and
empirical delimitations of study objects suitable for this theme may
comprise all levels of granularity, from singular artefacts conceived as
free-standing and self-contained infrastructures, to artefacts treated
as parts or components of a larger, interconnected network
(infrastructure), all the way up to concerns with networked information
infrastructures comprising multitudes of components in the broadest and
most comprehensive way. We also welcome a wide variety as regards
theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as the inclusion or
delimitation of relevant actors and
social/cultural/historical/intellectual et cetera contexts as shaped by,
and shaping, the infrastructures in question. 
In thinking about the journal issue theme, we have drawn inspiration
from, but will not limit ourselves to, a number of conceptions of and
approaches to infrastructures. Guribye and Lindström (2009, 154), e.g.,
define infrastructures for learning in a fairly intentional manner as
artefacts “designed to and / or assigned to support a learning practice”
(Guribye & Lindström, 2009: 154). Susan Leigh Star (1999, 380) on the
other hand emphasises, from broader organisational and institutional
concerns, infrastructures as relational to organized practices in the
sense that they mean different things in different practices. And Bowker
et al. (2010) make explicit that conceptions of infrastructures need to
include the people associated with them.
Possible questions that could be addressed in individual contributions
and when viewing the contributions as a collective are: 
How does the materiality of infrastructures change when they are
reinvented in a new medium (remediated) and what implications does it
have for learning and other information activities?

What similarities and differences can be found in how information
activities, such as learning, are constructed (and constrained) through
different types of infrastructures (or parts thereof)?

What aspects of power and politics can be connected to the design and
use of various information infrastructures? How does this relate to
issues of user empowerment, participation and inclusion and/or of
oppression, exclusion, and cultural/intellectual socialisation or
‘hijacking’?

What does a focus on infrastructures and materiality – often unnoticed
or viewed as operating in the background – contribute to the study of
learning and information practices?

 
REFERENCES
Bowker, G. C., Baker, K., Millerand, F. & Ribes, D. (2010). Toward
information infrastructure studies: Ways of knowing in a networked
environment. J. Hunsinger et al. (eds.). International Handbook of
Internet Research. Springer Science+Business Media B. 97-117.
Guribye, F. & Lindström, B. (2009). Infrastructures for learning and
networked tools. The introduction of a new tool in an
inter-organisational network. In Dirckink-Holmfeld, L., Jones, L.&
Lindström, B. (Eds.), Analysing Networked Learning Practices in Higher
Education and Continuing Professional Development. Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers. 103-116.
Star, S. L. (1999). The ethnography of infrastructure. American
Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377-391.    
 
EDITORS
Veronica Johansson and Ola Pilerot, Swedish School of Library and
Information Science, University of Borås.
 
PUBLICATION DATE
The thematic issue is planned for publication in September 2017. On
average, papers take approximately eleven months from submission to
publication. This means that papers should be submitted through the
journal management system by the end of November 2016.
http://www.informationr.net/ir/Cfp_Mat.html
 

************
Dr Ola Pilerot
Universitetslektor / Senior Lecturer 
Bibliotekshögskolan / Swedish School of Library and Information
Science
Högskolan i Borås / University of Borås
SE-501 90 BORÅS
SWEDEN
Tfn.: 033-435 43 29
Mobil: 0733-012 779
https://olapilerot.net/
http://lincs.gu.se/members/ola_pilerot/