[Air-L] social science research for the hi-tech sector

[danah boyd]

Social science in hi-tech is extremely common and as Ben pointed out,  
definitely check out EPIC.

The key question that often emerges is "how applied is the research?"   
For example, at Microsoft, we have at least dozens (perhaps hundreds)  
of applied social scientists (sociologists, psychologists,  
anthropologists, communications scholars, etc.) who are employed by  
individual product groups or can be hired by new product groups to do  
very directed research.  Microsoft Research is a totally different  
beast.  The researchers there set their own agenda and operate a lot  
like a professor (although there are plenty of incentives to  
contribute to the future of the company).  There are quite a few  
psychologists (of the HCI ilk); in the more soc/anthro space, you have  
me, Richard Harper, Alex Taylor, Jonathan Donner, Nimmi Rangaswamy,  
and probably many more that I can't think of or don't yet know. You  
also have quite a few designers who have a social science bent to them  
(most visibly Lili Cheng).

There are very few "pure" social science research centers inside  
corporate enterprises but there are a lot of social sciences who are  
doing tremendous applied research.  Intel's Peoples and Practice is  
somewhere in-between.  And then you have Genevieve Bell at Intel who  
is an Intel Fellow (and directs her own group on the home).  You have  
Jan Chipchase at Nokia who runs a pretty large team of social  
scientists of all stripes to think about design implications.  These  
are very visible scholars at big enterprises but I've met lots of  
folks at smaller enterprises as well as those who stay out of the  
limelight more. (Most of the folks that I follow are ethnographers and  
may or may not label themselves as sociologists or anthropologists.)

Many high-tech companies also contract out social science research  
through third party firms that work on specific areas.  And a lot of  
the market research firms they hire employ social scientists. So there  
are different ways in which social science research ends up inside  
tech companies.  But again, there's a pretty big gap between such  
applied research and what is painfully called "pure" research.  Social  
scientists typically make up a very small portion of that group  
compared to say computer scientists.

danah




On Sep 17, 2009, at 6:05 AM, Nicholas John wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone knows anything about social scientific
> research for the hi-tech sector? (That's "for", not "on".)
> Has anyone given thought to the question of how to make a convincing
> case to hi-tech companies for investing in sociological studies of
> their fields of operation?
> Or does anyone know how common the post of "in-house sociologist" is
> among hi-tech firms?
>
> Thanks
> Nicholas
>
> _________________
> Dr. Nicholas John
> www.sociothink.com
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/

------

"taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
http://www.danah.org/
@zephoria