’All data are cooked’: Recipes for researching software design and use

Dr. Juliane Jarke/ Irina Zakharova (Universität Bremen/ ifib)

Digital via Zoom, im Rahmen des Kolloqiums Sozialforschung (organisiert von Prof. Dr. Rainer Diaz-Bone und Dr. Kenneth Horvath).

Datum: 25. November 2020
Zeit: 16.15 Uhr bis 17.45 Uhr
Ort: Frohburgstrasse 3, 4.B01

This presentation offers a methodological reflection on different recipes (ways) of studying information systems and related data practices with a focus on organisations in the educational domain. The starting point is the observation that by now it has been widely acknowledged that data are not ‘raw’ (Gitelman 2013) but rather that they are ‘cooked’ (Bowker 2005). In many studies however, the information systems in which these data are produced, processed and circulate are conceived as given and to-some-extent stabilised objects that ‘configure’ their users and ‘inscribe’ certain data use practices. The contingencies in the design and implementation of such systems are mostly neglected. This presentation demonstrates that it is important to consider information systems design and use as situated, continuous and contingent processes of (re)configuring organisations.

We discuss three types of research artefacts that we produced in our study of four school information systems in four federal states in Germany. We understand these research artefacts as epistemic objects (Knorr-Cetina 2001), adopting epistemic practices from the field sites, and generating new practices for knowledge-production and organisational development and change. First, network-based artefacts enable us to reconstruct spatial and material dimensions of data practices across different organisations. As epistemic objects, networks explore educational actors’ boundary making practices, making certain school actors present 'in-here' and while leaving others 'out-there' (Law 2004). We demonstrate that different organisational data practices produce differently enacted organisational realities (e.g. with respect to the performance of organisational membership or the enactment of the organisational boundaries of schools). Second, process-oriented research artefacts make the temporality of data practices and the agential forces of specific human and non-human actors visible. Third, discourse-based artefacts engage with the actors’ differing sensemaking practices of their own and organisational data practices. These artefacts allow to capture some of the ‘intra-actions’ (Barad 2007) in which school information systems and associated data practices configure educational actors, their relations and educational processes.

Zoom-Link zum Vortrag:
https://unilu.zoom.us/j/92566198376?pwd=K2t3eWhyZVhFVTg2SzhTSmtTSTVnZz09
Meeting-ID: 925 6619 8376
Kenncode: 244537