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Working across multiple mediatheoretical and practical implications
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Outline
1. Defining the concepts2. Integration of multiple media3. Integration as translation4. Theoretical implications5. Practical implications6. Conclusion
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Working across multiple media
Formal vs informal Canonical vs non-canonical (Brown and Duguid) Visible vs invisible (e.g. Star and Strauss, 1999) etc...
Work as an accomplisment(The Practice Perspective)
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Working across multiple media
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Richness_Theory
Information Richness Theory (Daft and Lengel, 1984)
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Working across multiple media
Information richness theory does not considercontextual issues
Alternative theories, e.g:Social influence theory (Fulk, Schmitz & Steinfield 1990)Social learning theory (Bandura, 1986)etc (see www.december.com/cmc/theory/context.html)
Some examples of issues that aims at taking intoconsideration contextual issuesAwareness (e.g. Gutwin and Greenberg, 2002)Presence (Farshchian, 2002)Social translucense (Erickson et.al 2002)
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Working across multiple media
Working acrossmultiple media(sequentially orconcurrently)
Merging variousrepresentation ofinformation (paper,talking, digital, etc)
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Working across multiple media
In this presentation I refer to ”Working acrossmultiple media” as various representations ofinformation is drawn on in everyday work
Information always tied to its materiality, thus:Media in use = Infomation entity (representation of
information)Multiple media in use = heterogeneous assembly of
information entities
This representational perspective makesintegration (merging media) particularly relevant.
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1. Defining the concepts2. Integration of multiple media3. Integration as translation4. Theoretical implications5. Practical implications6. Conclusion
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Eliminating fragmentation - Integration
As organisations grow in scale and complexitythere is an increasing need to shareinformation across professional andinstitutional boundaries Inconsistent systems/media, redundancy and local
practices
Larger, integrated electronic basedinformation infrastructures are established toenable seamless integrationg and efficiencyERP-systems, KMS, EPRs, etc...
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Example -Translated into the healtcare domain Remove local systems and redundancy...
“users performing diverse tasks (...) in different departmentwithin a hospital may have deployed different (...) systemsthat should be integrated in order to support the businessprocesses adequately” (Grimson, Grimson and Hasselbring2000)
Integration at its peak...A thorough and general introduction of EPR is presumed to
have the most potential gain of all the ICT measures in thehealth and social sector. EPR throughout the whole of thehealth services is a premise for continuity of patient care ingeneral and in particular for patients with chroniccomplaints or complex needs (The Ministry of Health andSocial Affairs, 2004).
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Simply put...
From this To this
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Implementing a Global Scale IS(Rolland, 2003) Corporate-wide information infrastructure effort in a
major Maritime classification company. How a global-scale information system unfolded
globally across more than 150 local offices Objective: Reduce fragmentation and standardise IT Result: Fragmentation of multiple media
reintroduced Variation across sites (problem related to space)
in some offices the very same feature of the GSIS infrastructureintroduced an unintended side effect that re-introducedfragmentation of reporting information impeding theanticipated change to take place
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Implementing MS Sharepoint(Hepsø et.al 2007) Implementation of MS Sharepoint in a major
international Oil-company Interdisciplinary work - Production optimizsation MS Sharepoint not able to handle existing
infrastructure of specialised systems andpractices
Fragmentation of multiple media reintroduced Difficult to trace decisions in time
(problem related to time)
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What happened - abbreviated
From this To this
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Dimensions of fragmentation
Time
Space
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No ”one size fits all”
Fragmentation hard to remove Integration of multiple media extremely difficult
to accomlish and in particular large scaleintegration efforts Irreversibility of the installed base (Monteiro and
Hanseth, (heim.ifi.uio.no/~oleha/Publications/bok.html)Complexity and the boomerang effect (Rolland, 2003)The inevitable risk of side-effects (Hanseth et. al 2001 )Drift away from intentional usage (Ciborra, 2001)etc...
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1.Defining the concepts2.Integration of multiple media3.Integration as translation4.Theoretical Implications5.Practical Implications6.Conclusion
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Integration as translation
Single information entities always theoutcome of heterogeneous networks
Information sharing - a process oftranslation
Stabilisation (of information across sites)involves enrollment of allies and inscriptionof statement into different materials
(Latour, 1987)
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Relational - the outcome ofheterogeneous networksJohn Law
If you took away my computer, my colleagues,my office, my books, my desk, my telephone Iwouldn't be a sociologist writing papers,delivering lectures, and producing "knowledge”(Law, 1992)
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How do we make things understandable acrosstime and space? - inscription
Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/
Eskimo or Indian
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21Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/
Nose (indian)Arm (eskimo)
indian facing lefteskimo facing away
ear (indian)arm (eskimo)
How do we make things understandable across time andspace? - stronger inscription
Eskimo or Indian
22Source: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/
nose (indian)arm (eskimo)
indian facing lefteskimo facing away
ear (indian)arm (eskimo)
How do we make things understandable across time andspace? -even stronger inscription (me explaining)
Eskimo or Indian
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Integration revisited
Continuous process of decontextualisatingand recontextualisation of information.
”Information is essentially bound to thecontext of its production (...) disentanglingdata from their primary context (...)requires active work” (Berg and Goorman(1999, pp 58-59)
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Integration revisited (2)
”the further information has to be able tocirculate (i.e. the more diverse contexts it has tobe usable in), the more work is required todisentangle the information from the context ofits production” (Berg and Goorman, 1999, p 51)Entails working across multiple mediaEntails consideration of the various types of media
(written, oral, picture, etc) where information is inscribedCodified information entities are not self-explanatory but
needs to be enacted and made sense of
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1.Defining the concepts2.Integration of multiple media3.Integration as translation4.Theoretical Implications5.Practical Implications6.Conclusion
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Implications for theory
Move away from archive commodified andpurified conceptualisations of media as archive
In practice media is an evolving set of complexlyinterrelated forms, papers, technologies andpractices that are embedded historically andspatially in sociotechnical environments
The alternative perspective emphasise:(1) the distributed nature of information and(2) the process in which information is produced
Fragmentation along two dimensions (time andspace)
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1.Defining the concepts2.Integration of multiple media3.Integration as translation4.Theoretical Implications5.Practical Implications6.Conclusion
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Implications for designers
Acknowledge variation and pursue a strategy of localcultivation by designing alternative ways of representingdata and in that sense enable sensemaking processes(tech. has potential to promote different perspectives)
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Implications for designers
Focus on output - the various ways in which datamigh be transformed into different media orderto enable sensemaking. For example:abstractions in terms of summaries, tables, figures, ... Ilustrations of how things have evolved over timeaugmented technologies (to be used when working)
When possible automate (monitoring,coordination and accumulation)
Portals that incorporates the installed base andenables quick access to the ”patcwork ofsystems”
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Implications for users
Maintain/develop arena for sensemaking Accept and cater for differences (e.g. between
different professionals) Everything is negotiable... ambiguity always
present and important part of working andlearning
Trustbuilding when distributed - need to knowthe people on the other side in order to enableproductive interactionknowledge about the activity of the person at the other
side
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Implication for management
Arenas for local negotiaion (facilities, openversus closed work-environments, technologies)
Allow and nurture workarounds Moving away from control and efficiency and
establishing communities of learning - enablenetworking where people interact and integrationevolves from below (people are efficient inintegration multiple medias)
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1.Defining the concepts2.Integration of multiple media3.Integration as translation4.Theoretical Implications5.Practical Implications6.Conclusion
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Conclusion Working across multiple media is an intrisic part
of everyday work Rather than pursuing an archive-strategy of
integrating, one should acknowledge ambiguityand fragmentation
Integration - ongoing, heterogeneous andachieved in practice (i.e. in which multiple mediaare embedded)
In larger information infrastructures, multiplemedia might compensate for lack of fit with localpracticeFacilitate sensemaking processes locally...
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