- (1997) and Callon (1999).
- Social Construction Of Technology (SCOT) - argues that technology does not determine human action, but that human action shapes technology. Key concepts include:
- --- : "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed and interpreted ... By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in how people think of or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility in how artifacts are designed."
- --- : shares a particular set of meanings about an artifact
- --- and stabilization: when the relevant social group has reached a consensus
- --- wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group shapes its norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given to an artifact"
: Key authors include Pinch and Bijker (1992) and Kline.
- Structuration Theory - defines structures as rules and resources organized as properties of social systems. The theory employs a recursive notion of actions constrained and enabled by structures which are produced and reproduced by that action. Consequently, in this theory technology is not rendered as an artifact, but instead examines how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Key authors include DeSantis and Poole (1990), and Orlikowski (1992).
- Systems Theory - considers the historical development of technology and media with an emphasis on inertia and heterogeneity, stressing the connections between the artifact being built and the social, economic, political and cultural factors surrounding it. Key concepts include when elements of a system lag in development with respect to others, differentiation, operational closure, and autopoietic autonomy. Key authors include Luhmann (2000).
- Values in Design - asks how do we ensure a place for values (alongside technical standards such as speed, efficiency, and reliability) as criteria by which we judge the quality and acceptability of information systems and new media. How do values such as privacy, autonomy, democracy, and social justice become integral to conception, design, and development, not merely retrofitted after completion? Key thinkers include Nissenbaum (2001).
Additionally, many authors have posed technology so as to critique and or emphasize aspects of technology as addressed by the mainline theories. For example, Woolgar (1991) considers ''technology as text'' in order to critique the Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge as applied to technology and to distinguish between three responses to that notion: the instrumental response (interpretive flexibility), the interpretivist response (environmental/organizational influences), the reflexive response (a double hermeneutic). Pfaffenberger (1992) teats ''technology as drama'' to argue that a recursive structuring of technological artifacts and their social structure discursively regulate the technological construction of political power. A technological drama is a discourse of technological "statements" and "counterstatements" within the processes of technological regularization, adjustment, and reconstitution.
There are also a number of technology related theories that address specifically how (media) technology affects small group interactions:
- Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel 1986) posits that the amount of information communicated differs with respect its host media's ''richness''. Consequently, there is a rate of understanding achieved in a specific time with which the media can resolve uncertainty and ambiguity. This does not imply that all media are appropriate for all communication tasks. The richness of the media should be matched to the task so as to prevent over-simplification or -complication.
- Media synchronicity theory (MST, Dennis and Valacich 2004 ) redirects richness theory towards the ''synchronicity'' of the communication.
- Social presence theory (Short, et al. 1976) highlights the ''salience of another person'' in a mediated environment as subjectively perceived.
- Social Identification/Deindividuation (SIDE, Postmes, Spears and Lea 1999) theory suggests that in the absence of individuating cues about others, as is the case in computer-mediated communication, individuals build stereotypical impressions of others based on limited information.
- Time, Interaction, and Performance (TIP, McGrath 1991) theory describes work groups as time-based, multi-modal, and multi-functional social systems. Groups interact in one of the modes of inception, problem solving, conflict resolution, and execution. The three functions of a group are production (towards a goal), support (affective) and well-being (norms and roles).
Finally, there are theories of technology which are not defined or claimed by a proponent, but are used by authors in describing existing literature, in contrast to their own or as a review of the field.
For example, Markus and Robey (1988) specifically propose a general theory of technology consisting of the causal structures of agency (technological, organizational, imperative, emergent), its structure (variance, process), and the level (micro, macro) of analysis.
Orlikowski (1992) notes that previous conceptualizations of technology typically differ over scope (is technology more than hardware?) and role (is it an external objective force, the interpreted human action, or an impact moderated by humans?) and identifies three models:
# technological imperative: focuses on organizational characteristics which can be measured and permits some level of contingency
# strategic choice: focuses on how technology is influenced by the context and strategies of decision-makers and users
# technology as triggerer of structural change: views technology as a social object
DeSanctis and Poole (1994) similarly write of three views of technology's effects:
# decision-making: the view of engineers associated with positivist, rational, systems rationalization, and deterministic approaches
# institutional school: technology is an opportunity for change, focuses on social evolution, social construction of meaning, interaction and historical processes, interpretive flexibility, and an interplay between technology and power
# an integrated perspective (social technology): soft-line determinism, with joint social and technological optimization, structural symbolic interaction theory
Bimber (1998) addresses the determinacy of technology effects by distinguishing between the:
# normative: an autonomous approach where technology is an important influence on history only where societies attached cultural and political meaning to it (e.g., the industrialization of society)
# nomological: a naturalistic approach wherein an inevitable technological order arises based on laws of nature (e.g., steam mill had to follow the hand mill).
# unintended consequences: a fuzzy approach that is demonstrative that technology is contingent (e.g., a car is faster than a horse, but unbeknownst to its original creators become a significant source of pollution)
- Bimber, B. (1998). Three faces of technological determinism. In Smith, M. and Marx, L., editors, Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, pages 79-100. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Callon, M. (1999). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay. In Biagioli, M., editor, The Science Studies Reader, pages 67-83. Routledge, New York.
- Daft, R. L. and Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5):554-571.
- Denis, A. and Valacich, J. (1999). Rethinking media richness: towards a theory of media synchronicity. Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science.
- Desanctis, G. and Poole, M. S. (1990). Understanding the use of group decision support systems: the theory of adaptive structuration. In J. Fulk, C. S., editor, Organizations and Communication Technology, pages 173-193. Sage, Newbury Park, CA.
- Desanctis, G. and Poole, M. S. (1994). Capturing the complexity in advanced technology use: adaptive structuration theory. Organization Science, 5(2):121-147.
- Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts. In Bijker, W. and Law, J., editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Latour, B. (1997). On Actor Network Theory: a few clarifications. (Part 1 and 2 )
- Luhmann, N. (2000). The reality of the mass media. Stanford, Stanford, CA
- Markus, M. and Robey, D. (1988). Information technology and organizational change: causal structure in theory and research. Management Science, 34:583-598.
- McGrath, J. E. (1991). Time, interaction, and performance (tip): A theory of groups. small group research. 22(2):147-174.
- Nissenbaum, H. (2001). How computer systems embody values How computer systems embody values . Computer, 34(3):120-118.
- Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). The duality of technology: rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3):398-427.
- Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Technological dramas. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 17(3):282-312.
- Pinch, T. and Bijker, W. (1992). The social construction of facts and artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. In Bijker, W. and Law, J., editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society, pages 17-50. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Postmes, T., Spears, R., and Lea, M. (1999). Social identity, group norms, and deindividuation: Lessons from computer-mediated communication for social influence in the group. In N. Ellemers, R. Spears, B. D., editor, Social Identity: Context, Commitment, Content. Blackwell., Oxford.
- Short, J. A., Williams, E., and Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
- Woolgar, S. (1991). The turn to technology in social studies of science. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 16(1):20-50.
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