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Ethnographies of Large-Scale Systems: How to Study Distributed, Emerging and Complex Sociotechnical Systems

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Ethnographies of Large-Scale Systems: How to Study Distributed, Emerging and Complex Sociotechnical Systems Ethnographies of Large-Scale Systems: How to study distributed, emerging and complex sociotechnical systems David Ribes and Steven Jackson Workshop Organizers and Moderators Communication Culture & Technology - School of Information Georgetown University - University of Michigan [email protected] -- [email protected] Marina Jirotka Bonnie Nardi Susan Leigh Star Oxford eResearch Centre and Bren School of Information and School of Information Computing Laboratory Computer Sciences University of Pittsburgh University of Oxford, UK University of California Irvine [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] OBJECTIVES material for an open discussion. Our participants We have arranged this session to open discussion were selected both for their diverse modes of and sharing around common experiences, interface with their objects of study and a shared approaches and outcomes of ethnographic studies commitment to ethnography and information of large-scale systems. The rich and detailed systems. This includes a range of ‘sites’ ‘thick descriptions’ produced by ethnographers stretching from funding and the policy sphere, to have contributed to the understanding of human- the activities of design and implementation, to computer interactions, meanings and cultures of studying actual use of production quality the digital environment, and practices of systems. technology use. Ethnography has traditionally focused on a site, a geographically localized community or particular workplaces. However, in STRUCTURE an increasingly computer mediated and networked world, ethnographers have had to The session will begin with participants’ brief adapt their methods, their sites of investigation presentations recounting a single exemplary and their objects of analysis. We have many experience, approach or method in studying shorthands for these difficulties: distribution, large-scale systems and the research questions scale, heterogeneous expertises, multiple these activities have generated. The format will membership, etc. Often these difficulties are be “5:3:1”, that is, a five minute presentation precisely what our research attempts to address using no more than three slides in order to but only rarely do we give ourselves leeway to address a single concept, idea or to illustrate a discuss how they affect our own practice. story. We will then open the floor to discussion amongst presenters and with the audience. The five participants in this interactive panel will share strategies, problems, and field experiences The goal for this session is for the experiences from their own studies of large scale systems. and methods themselves to act as common Exemplars told as experiences, stories and starting points for a collective discussion of narratives, are ideal devices for capturing and ethnographic approaches to large scale systems. conveying the complexities of real world field Topics will emerge organically from discussion. research. These exemplars will serve as the This said, below are some of the topics we expect organizations, and analyses of the design and use will come to structure the conversation: of information technologies in international development settings. • Traditions of ethnography: e.g., historical ethnography, multi-sited Marina Jirotka is Director of the Centre for ethnography, virtual ethnography and Requirements Engineering, Associate Director of so on the Oxford e-Research Centre and Associate • Multi-method approaches: Researcher of the Oxford Internet Institute. Her quantitative and network methods research interests have long been concerned with • Multi-investigator teams bringing a richer comprehension of socially • Comparative studies organized work practice into the process of engineering technological systems with a focus • Longitudinal studies on supporting everyday work and interaction. • Venues for communicating approaches and findings back to our Early on in her career she developed the use of colleagues video-based ethnographic research for use in • Traditions of ‘objective’ and Requirements Engineering. This work was done ‘subjective’ research in collaboration with BT and helped solve • Methods or best-practices for problems for City of London trading rooms, investigation service centers and control rooms. • Funding opportunities and dangers • Developing long-term partnerships Bonnie Nardi is a faculty member in the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine. An anthropologist, she is interested in PARTICIPANTS innovative social uses of the Internet. She has studied instant messaging, blogging, and other David Ribes is a faculty member in Georgetown forms of computer-mediated communication, as University’s Communication, Culture and well as face to face communication. She is the Technology Program. Trained in sociology and author of three books, an edited collection and Science Studies at UC San Diego, he completed many articles. Her latest book, My Life as a his post-doc at University of Michigan’s School Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of of Information. Throughout his academic career World of Warcraft, will be published by the David has been an ‘ethnographer of University of Michigan Press, June 2010. cyberinfrastructure’ -- large scale information infrastructure for the sciences. His dissertation Susan Leigh Star is Doreen Boyce Chair in research focused on the practical work of Library and Information Science at the School of participants in the GEON project Information Sciences at the University of (cyberinfrastructure for the earth sciences) and Pittsburgh. For many years she has worked with since then he has continued his explorations of computer and information scientists, with whom ethnographic methods for studying large-scale she has studied work, practice, organizations, systems. scientific communities and their decisions, and the social/moral aspects of information Steven Jackson is a faculty member in the infrastructure. Her latest book is a co-edited University of Michigan School of Information collection with Martha Lampland, entitled and coordinator of the school's Information Standards and Their Stories: How Policy (IPOL) program. His work addresses Standardization, Quantification and policy and practice in large-scale collaborative Formalization Shape Everyday Life (Cornell U.. science, information infrastructure and Press, 2009). democratic practice in public sector .
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