[AISWorld] 2nd CFP on Social IS Special Issue of ITP

[Helen Hasan]

Call for Papers
Special Issue of Information Technology & People
Title: "The Intersection of Social Information Systems and Social Informatics"
Submissions Due:  September 29 to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/itp
Initial manuscripts should be around 7000 words in length. See here for more details http://socialisworkshopecis2014.wordpress.com/cfp-special-issue-of-itp/

Social Information Systems (Social IS) has recently emerged as a topic of relevance and importance  to the field of IS.  If this is a topic of interest to you please consider a submission to this Special Issue of Information Technology and People
This special issue welcomes papers with diverse views on whether we need to embed a new term such as Social IS or Social Informatics into the IS vocabulary. And if we do, can we come up with a definition or description of the term so that people know what it is and what it is not. This special issue could be a step towards establishing a set of meaningful characteristic to frame Social IS journal papers, conference tracks and courses in IS curricula.

At a workshop held at ECIS2014, the topic was enthusiastically explored with considerable agreement on the value of investing further effort in this area. To stimulate potential contributors to the Special Issue, a summary of the ideas presented at the ECIS workshop follows:
There has been a steady trend for many IS scholars to move away from only studying topics associated with the traditional roots of IS in the business systems of organisations. This trend has followed the transformative changes of digital technologies, bringing us personal computers, multifunctional mobile devices and social media. They have expanded IS from the province of MIS Department in corporations and given power to end-users wherever they are. Even within organisations, IS has more human content in emails, intranets and socially oriented systems.
These new socially focussed information systems have such distinctly different characteristics from the traditional organisational information systems that we believe there is a case for a new area of IS with its own identity. However, it is easier to say what it is not and how Social IS differs from traditional/organisational IS than to say what it is and what are its unifying distinguishing characteristics. While efforts to establish a set of meaningful stable characteristic for Social IS may take some time and effort, this effort is important if Social IS is to have a unique identity.
As a starting point, Social IS (or Social Informatics) is more than just social media, or systems which use social media, just as traditional IS is not just ERP. Social media can enable and support Social IS but so can other technologies such as email and intranets.
While acknowledging that it is possible to have hybrids of traditional and Social IS, there is a need to distinguish between the characteristic of each in respect of their technology, motivation, development, purpose and use.
The distinguishing characteristics of Social IS drive the need to discuss appropriate research methodologies and theories that would be more suitable for investigations of Social IS than those currently used to study traditional IS.
If these ideas stimulate you, if you contest them or have conducted research that can expand on them we welcome your submission to this Special Issue
Special issue editors:
A/Prof Helen Hasan, University of Wollongong, Australia <hasan at uow.edu.au<mailto:hasan at uow.edu.au>>
A/Prof Henry Linger, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia <henry.linger at monash.edu<mailto:henry.linger at monash.edu>>
Dr Cecile Paris Science Leader, CSIRO, Sydney, Australia <Cecile.Paris at csiro.au>


Helen Hasan
Associate Professor
Researching Information Systems and Knoweldge Management
Australian Health Services Research Institute
Faculty of Business
Enterprise 1 Building Innovation Campus
University of Wollongong NSW 2522
P + 61 2 4221 3757
F + 61 2 4221 3725
M 0419403699
W  http://www.uow.edu.au/~hasan/
Tw: https://twitter.com/bottlingfog
BE GREEN! Read from the screen

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