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This paper aims to address some limitations in existing approaches to the study of mis- and dis-information and offers what the authors propose as a more comprehensive approach to framing and studying these issues, geared toward the undergraduate level of learner. In doing so, the authors prioritize social shaping of technology and critical informatics perspectives as lenses for explicating and understanding complex mis- and dis-information phenomena. One purpose is to offer readers an understanding of the mis- and dis-information studies landscape, and advocate for the merit of taking the given approach the authors outline.

The paper builds upon design-based research (DBR) methods. In this paper, the authors present the actual curriculum that will be empirically researched in 2022 and beyond in a program of iterative DBR.

Findings of this conceptual paper comprise a fully articulated undergraduate syllabus for a course the authors entitled, “Disinformation Detox.” The authors will iterate upon this curriculum development in ongoing situated studies conducted in undergraduate classrooms.

The value and originality of this article is in its contribution of the ontological “innovation” of a way of framing the mis- and dis-information knowledge domain in terms of social shaping and critical informatics theories. The authors argue that the proposed approach offers students the opportunity to cultivate a complex form of what Milner and Phillips describe as “ecological literacy” that is in keeping with the mis- and dis-information problem domain.

To extend the work of Rob Kling, whose research interests, and advocacy were at the center of a movement in analytical inquiry and empirical research now known as “social informatics”.

Reviews the work of those who engage in social informatics research to strengthen and further the conceptual perspective, analytical approaches, and intellectual contributions of social informatics.

The vibrant and growing international community of active social informatics scholars has assembled a social informatics resource kit that includes: perspective lenses through which research data can be viewed critically; techniques for building theory and developing models from socially rich empirical data; and a common body of knowledge regarding the uses and effects of ICTs.

The paper identifies opportunities to engage new scholars in social informatics discussions, and suggests new venues for promoting and extending the work of scholars already enrolled in the social informatics movement.

Looking back over the 1990s, it is easy to see the widespread troubles of many ventures that depended upon advanced IT applications, including business process re‐engineering projects, enterprise systems, knowledge management projects, online distance education courses, and, famously, some of the dot‐com businesses. These “troubles” vary from substantial underperformance (i.e. projects that were much more costly and/or produced much less social or business value than most of the participating IT professionals anticipated) and many outright failures. Many of these “troubles” could have been avoided (or at least ameliorated) if the participating IT professionals had much more reliable and critical understanding of the relationships between IT configurations, socio‐technical interventions, social behavior of other participants in different roles, and the dynamics of organizational and social change. Social informatics is the name of the field that studies and theorizes this topic, and is discussed in more detail in this paper. The key issue addressed in this paper is who will produce social informatics research for IT professionals, and where will they learn about important findings, theories, design approaches, etc.? The paper examines the record of computer science in the US as a major contributor to the relevant research and teaching. It also examines the possibilities for new kinds of academic programs – sometimes called “information schools” and “IT schools” – that are being developed to expand beyond the self‐imposed boundaries of computer science and to integrate some organizational and social research as sites for social informatics.

This paper is an extension of a panel presentation delivered in response to a joint call for panels by the Social Informatics and Information Ethics and Policy Special Interest Groups for the 2022 Association for Information Science and Technology conference. The purpose is to introduce critical race frameworks and tenets as a lens to develop, assess and analyze the social informatics (SI) within information science (IS) research, professional discourse, praxis and pedagogical paradigms. This paper spotlights one of the presentations from that panel, an iteration of Critical Race Theory (CRT) designed specifically for information studies: CRiTical Race information Theory (CRiT).

Just as importantly, using SI as part of the context, the paper also includes a discussion that illustrates research and theory building possibilities as both counter and complement to the technocratic advances that permeate society at every level (macro, mezzo and micro), which can also be reasonably framed as the information industrial complex. Thus, CRiT joins other forms of critical discourse and praxis grappling with deconstructing, decolonizing, demarginalizing and demystifying the influence and impact of information technologies. While CRiT has global intentions and implications, this specific discussion has an extensive American focus.

If we consider the rapid pace in which techno-determinism is moving toward the vise grip of techno-fatalism controlled by frameworks generated from the information industrial complex, we can reasonably consider that humanity on a global basis is living within a meta-large technocratic crisis moment. This crisis moment is both acute and chronic. That is, the technocratic crisis is continuously moving quickly while simultaneously worsening over an extended period of time with no remedies and few responses to substantively address the crisis.

Part of the nature of information and data is measurability. Thus, identifying compatible nomenclature connecting the descriptiveness of intersectionality (a seminal CRT tool) as a qualitative research method to the measurability of data connected to quantitative research, a mixed method approach moves from possible to plausible. Additionally, within IS, there are often opportunities to measure human engagement, such as social media content, search engine use, assessing practices of categorizations, and multiple forms of surveillance data as a short list. Hence, the descriptiveness of intersectional qualitative research “mixed” with the measurability of quantitative research within information settings implies exponential methodological possibilities.

CRiT is multilayered, on the one hand, with the intention of being a discipline-specific, information-specific form of CRT. On the other hand, CRiT theory building is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary based on information as omnipresent phenomena. An ongoing challenge for CRiT theory building is identifying and working within a balance between, practitioners who typically throw anything and everything at practical problems, while scholars often slice problems into such small segments that practical understanding is severely limited. Embracing and integrating the dynamic interplay between developing ideas and using them is the key to evolving CRiT within the social sciences.

There is plenty of room as well as a need for additional narrative discussing or challenging the use or appropriation of information from a technocratic approach, a counter to the information industrial complex.

CRiT is emerging and cutting edge in discussion that addresses the technocratic determinism found in most scholarly discourses.

Informatics is a relatively new interdisciplinary field which is not very well understood outside of specific disciplinary communities. With a review of the history of informatics and a discussion of the various branches of informatics related to health-care practice, the paper aims to provide an overview designed to enhance the understanding of an information professional interested in this field.

The paper is designed to provide a basic introduction to the topic of informatics for information professionals unfamiliar with the field. Using a combination of historical and current sources, the role of informatics in the health professions is explored through its history and development.

The emergence of informatics as a discipline is a relatively recent phenomenon. Informatics is neither information technology (IT) nor information science but shares many common interests, concerns and techniques with these other two fields. The role of the informaticist is to transform data to knowledge and information. Consequently, while the outcomes may be different, there are many commonalities in informatics with the work information professionals perform.

Most introductions to informatics assume the reader is either an IT professional or a clinical practitioner in one of the health science fields. This paper takes a unique approach by positioning the discussion of the history and application of informatics in the health sciences from the perspective of the information professional.

The purpose of this paper is to trace how the relationship between city governments and citizens has developed over time with the introduction of urban informatics and smart city technology.

The argument presented in the paper is backed up by a critical review approach based on a transdisciplinary assessment of social, spatial and technical research domains.

Smart cities using urban informatics can be categorised into four classes of maturity or development phases depending on the qualities of their relationship with their citizenry. The paper discusses the evolution of this maturity scale from people as residents, consumers, participants, to co-creators.

The paper’s contribution has practical implications for cities wanting to take advantage of urban informatics and smart city technology. First, recognising that technology is a means to an end requires cities to avoid technocratic solutions and employ participatory methodologies of urban informatics. Second, the most challenging part of unpacking city complexities is not about urban data but about a cultural shift in policy and governance style towards collaborative citymaking. The paper suggests reframing the design notion of usability towards “citizen-ability”.

The National eletronic Library for Health (NeLH) is to write a new knowledge service for patients and clinicians. This article describes the background to NeLH in Information for Health and outlines the aims, benefits and architecture of the proposed service. It identifies the challenge to Health librarians to develop new skills in informatics and critical appraisal.

This paper aims to explore how critical digital and data literacies are facilitated by testing different methods in the classroom, with the ambition to find a pedagogical framework for prompting sustained critical literacies.

This contribution draws on a 10-year set of critical pedagogy experiments conducted in Denmark, USA and Italy, and engaging more than 1,500 young adults. Multi-method pedagogical design trains students to conduct self-oriented guided autoethnography, situational analysis, allegorical mapping, and critical infrastructure analysis.

The techniques of guided autoethnography for facilitating sustained data literacy rely on inviting multiple iterations of self-analysis through sequential prompts, whereby students move through stages of observation, critical thinking, critical theory-informed critique around the lived experience of hegemonic data and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures.

Critical digital/data literacy researchers should continue to test models for building sustained critique that not only facilitate changes in behavior over time but also facilitate citizen social science, whereby participants use these autoethnographic techniques with friends and families to build locally relevant critique of the hegemonic power of data/AI infrastructures.

The proposed literacy model adopts a critical theory stance and shows the value of using multiple modes of intervention at micro and macro levels to prompt self-analysis and meta-level reflexivity for learners. This framework places critical theory at the center of the pedagogy to spark more radical stances, which is contended to be an essential step in moving students from attitudinal change to behavioral change.