A Social Informatics Perspective on Socio-Technical Networks

Network-centric perspectives have gained increasing salience, as interconnected information and communication technologies (ICTs) become more ubiquitous in our daily lives. In this paper, we provide an overview of socio-technical network studies, which we then use to help situate the development and use of ICTs within social and organizational domains. We briefly review traditional conceptualizations of socio-technical systems, and then introduce some contemporary theoretical extensions and sociological reconceptualizations. This discussion emphasizes the capability of social informatics perspectives to guide our current and future examinations of ICT use in sociotechnical networks