How to Do Things With Words

The theory of affordances

Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

/pdf/qualitative-research-in-information-systems-1sezxwy02d.pdf

Qualitative Research in Information Systems

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us. While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of: -More adultlike children and more childlike adults; -More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and -Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs. The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation. The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

No sense of place : the impact of electronic media on socialbehavior

Virtual worlds have received considerable attention as platforms for entertainment, education, and commerce. But organizations are experiencing failures in their early attempts to lure customers, employees, or partners into these worlds. Among the more grievous problems is the inability to attract users back into a virtual environment. In this study, we propose and test a model to predict users' intentions to return to a virtual world. Our model is based on the idea that users intend to return to a virtual world having conceived of it as a "place" in which they have had meaningful experiences. We rely on the interactionist theory of place attachment to explain the links among the constructs of our model. Our model is tested via a lab experiment. We find that users' intentions to return to a virtual world is determined by a state of deep involvement (termed cognitive absorption) that users experience as they perform an activity and tend to lose track of time. In turn, cognitive absorption is determined by users' awareness of whom they interact with and how they interact within a virtual world, what they interact about, and where, in a virtual sense, such interaction occurs. Our work contributes to theory in the following ways: it identifies state predictors of cognitive absorption, it conceives of virtual worlds in such a way as to account for users' experiences through the notion of place, and it explains how the properties of a virtual world contribute to users' awareness.

From space to place: predicting users' intentions to return to virtual worlds

Research Article Iris Junglas Florida State University iris.junglas@gmail.com Lakshmi Goel University of North Florida l.goel@unf.edu Chon Abraham College of William and Mary chon.abraham@mason.wm.edu Blake Ives University of Houston bives@mac.com The adoption of information systems is often explained in terms of usefulness and ease of use. Lately, researchers have begun to recognize that a hedonic streak in human beings provides a further contributing factor in the adoption and acceptance of information systems. Embedded in this streak is a broader social aspect that incorporates not only the solitary, individual pleasure one gets from using the system, but also a pleasure that one gets from interacting and socializing with others through the system. This becomes particularly evident in virtual environments that support high levels of interaction with others and with artifacts embedded in an immersive context. By drawing on IS theories of technology acceptance and IS success, and on theories of social interaction from evolutionary psychology, activity theory, situated action, and distributed cognition, we test the construct of sociability and its antecedents in Second Life—a popular virtual environment. Our results support that, in addition to an information and system component, a social component contributes to IS usage.

/pdf/the-social-component-of-information-systems-how-sociability-4n4ozcq0h3.pdf

The Social Component of Information Systems—How Sociability Contributes to Technology Acceptance

This paper explores the social processes and mechanisms that give form to a prominent type of online community: community blogs. We conducted an interpretive study that examines a particular community blog, MetaFilter, by drawing on the concepts of communities of practice as a theoretical lens. Theoretically, we contribute to the body of knowledge of online communities by identifying the structures of an emergent type of community that is brought together by blog technology. Our findings suggest that cohesion in a community blog is brought about by the following practices: (a) explicit ground rules regarding membership, (b) presence of moderators, (c) availability of profile information, (d) ‘net etiquette’, (e) tacit warrants for discerning pertinent posts, and (f) the deployment of specific techniques of discipline.

Exploring the dynamics of blog communities: the case of MetaFilter

Increased activity by U.S. students to study abroad has invited several studies that have investigated the reasons for U.S. students to study abroad. Literature in the context of study abroad choices has been fragmented, with each study presenting an ad-hoc set of factors the author/s deem as important or that have been shown to be important in previous literature. However, no study to date has attempted to identify a theoretical framework that explains why these factors should be important in explaining the intention to participate in a study abroad program. In this study, we use the theoretical background of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and trait theory to unify the existing body of literature and arrive at a model that predicts study abroad intentions. We test this model by means of a survey administered in a U.S. university.

Toward a Comprehensive Framework of Study Abroad Intentions and Behaviors

Virtual worlds or three-dimensional computer-based simulated environments have received considerable attention as platforms for entertainment, education and commerce. In contrast to a web site, for example, where a user interacts with a two-dimensional site, virtual worlds provide a platform in which users can interact with other individuals, sometimes including strangers, within three-dimensional environments. Virtual worlds afford a form of ‘socialness’ unlike many other technologies, often motivating a user – by virtue of these social experiences – to return. Drawing on the Spatial Model of Interaction and Awareness-Attention Theory, we demonstrate that besides social aspects, which include social awareness and social perception, flow experience, which is the mental state of being fully absorbed and somewhat lost in time, is an essential ingredient in an individual's decision to return to a virtual world. We also demonstrate how characteristics of the technology are linked to the social aspects experienced in virtual worlds. A laboratory study conducted in a virtual world, Second Life, supports our assertions and identifies state predictors of flow that influence individuals' intentions to return to the virtual world environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Lakshmi Goel

Papers

From space to place: predicting users' intentions to return to virtual worlds

The Social Component of Information Systems—How Sociability Contributes to Technology Acceptance

Exploring the dynamics of blog communities: the case of MetaFilter

Toward a Comprehensive Framework of Study Abroad Intentions and Behaviors

Predicting users' return to virtual worlds: a social perspective