INF5210 Information Infrastructure Class #2 Actor Network Theory - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Information Infrastructure Class #2 Actor Network Theory

Ben Eaton Dan Truong Le 04/09/2013

INF5210

Overview

• Review:

▫ ANT concepts taken from ▫ Cha 5. From Control to Drift - Monteiro - Actor Network Theory and Information Infrastructure

• Background to ANT
• Introduction to ANT
• Key ANT concepts for II

ANT will enable you to describe and understand how your II is or is not aligned with the aims of your organisation

Towards a Theory of Information Infrastructures

A Theories of Information Infrastructures (Evolution & Design) Assemblage Theory

Process Strategies Architecture Governance Complexity Science Actor Network Theory Reflexive Modernisation

ANT Background

Our research needs

• Problems of the development, introduction and use of an

II concern:

▫ social-technical processes

 affected by characteristics of both technology & society

▫ processes of negotiation and interaction between different actants ▫ IIs contain multiple layers

 Drop Box (SaaS), AWS (IaaS), Internet, Physical Networks

• The need for an analytical tool that:

▫ facilitates the analysis of IIs to address the concerns above

..... Actor Network Theory

The Management of IIs in the

• rganisation: A traditional view
• A key concern:

▫ Alignment of technology and business strategies ▫ Alignment => bringing order (through a process of control) ▫ to technology in an organisation and what employees do ▫ So that the organisation works efficiently to fulfill its objectives

• Organisational change concerning IIs:

▫ Adoption of II by people ▫ Integration with other technology, work processes and practices ▫ Evolution of IIs, organisational structure and function, work processes and practices

• Driven through a top down process imposed by senior management

▫ A predictable process driven by rational decision making ▫ A steady state where everything is under control can be maintained

A common perspective to this traditional view: Technological Determinism

• The way technology is developed:

▫ Predictable, can be controlled ▫ Not influenced by social concerns such as politics or cultural context

• Any changes that arise to society through technology

▫ Are due to the inherent characteristics of the technology ▫ Social concerns such as politics or cultural context have no part to play in these changes

• Extreme View
• Dominant view in IS pre 80's

Opposite view: (Strong) Social Constructivism

• The way technology is developed:

▫ Entirely shaped by social concerns such as politics or cultural context ▫ The constraints of technology have no impact on the design process

• Any changes that arise to society through technology

▫ Entirely due to social concerns such as politics or cultural context ▫ The inherent characteristics of any technology have no impact on this process

• An opposite extreme view
• Influencing IS in 80's/90's

The Non Technical in IS Research: Science & Technology Studies

• Research agenda moving away from Technological Determinism towards

Social Constructivism, e.g.

• Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

▫ Questioning the robustness of scientific method through anthropological studies ▫ Laboratory Life (1979) Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar ▫ What we might consider scientific fact isn't necesarily the result of the scientific method ▫ Rather it is the result of social processes such as politics and infighting

• Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)

▫ E.g. Pinch & Bijker (1984) - The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other. ▫ Interpretive Flexibility: different actors develop different meanings for the same technology

Introduction to ANT

Actor Network Theory

• Has its roots in Science & Technology Studies
• Avoids extreme views of technological determinism

and strong social constructivism

• Characteristics of technology and a social setting

interact with each other

• Provides a framework for understanding how

change is enabled and constrained in orgs

• Increasingly used as a means of interpreting

qualitative data to explain processes of IS change in

• rganisations

ANT takes view

• Both:

▫ Alignment of technology and business strategies ▫ Organisational change concerning IIs

• Driven by both chr$ of technology & social concerns like power &

politics

• Stability can be reached sometimes, but is often only temporary
• (Control to drift)
• Not strict top down process, components parts of system align

through

• Influence of top down - negotiation, buy in, pursuasion
• Also bottom up - aligning interests with peers etc
• Do you think this is more realistic?

What is an Actor Network? Pt1

• Any activity or action is enabled by

▫ different elements ▫ and factors that influence the way these elements behave

• These elements are known as ACTANTS and may be

▫ social (e.g. individuals or institutions) ▫ as well as technical (computer, network etc)

• Factors that influence the way that these actors behave individually and as a

group may again be

▫ Social (law, social norms, experience) ▫ and technical (processing speed, bandwidth etc)

• Actants and factors taken together form an actor network (a network of

actors)

▫ The way that they join, leave and behave in a network ▫ Explains how an activity is conducted over a period of time.

What is an Actor Network? Pt2

• ANT views society as a completely interwoven

socio-technical web

• It is the study of how order is built (and falls

apart) - (study of semiotics)

• An actor network can be thought of as the

context, or the conditions,

▫ necesarry to be in place for a particular activity or set of actions to occur.

How to build and describe an Actor Network

• Identify the story in your case about how

▫ Actants and conditions come together (or don't) in

• rder for something to happen

▫ map out the set of actors anf condition, as a network, that describe your case ▫ Use ANT terms - described shortly - to analyse how this situation came into being (or not)

• How much detail do you go into?

▫ practice judgement to identify (and argue) key elements that are critical context from mere background ▫ ie what is relevent

An example for us to discuss: YouTube

taken from http://sgunadjaja.wordpress.com/ Note - just for illustration only, we could add to it significantly

ANT Key Concepts

ANT concept: Inscription

• Inscribe=

▫ "write or carve (words or symbols) on something, especially as a formal or permanent record" ▫ Oxford English Dictionary

• Inscription: process by which patterns of use are designed into technical artefacts

▫ Enabling & constraining particular behaviours ▫ e.g. My ability to file research expenses on UiO SAP ... and my work arounds for fields that don't exist

• Designers have particular assumptions and beliefs about the needs and behaviours of

users, which are "baked" into the technology they design ▫ A program of action is inscribed into a piece of technology ▫ Technology then becomes an Actant in its own right imposing its program of action on its users

• This can affect how other actants in an actor network "buy into" an Actor Network for

it to succeed .. hence

ANT concept: Translation

• The process by which stability or order is reached

(temporarily) in an actor network.

• Social process of aligning interests amongst different actors as

a negotiation

• Actants - buying into the network (or not)
• Different actors have different interests and different levels of

power to assert those interests

• Describes how different actors translate or re-interpret others

interests to their own - and buy into the the actor network

ANT concept: Irreversibility

• The concept that when translation has occurred - the actors have

"bought into" the Actor Network - the network becomes increasingly

▫ accepted ▫ institutionalised ▫ hard to change - irreversible

• a means to explain how some information infrastructures become

hard to change

• The positions of actants in the actor network have become fixed so

that it becomes hard to evolve the II

• the establishment and adoption of standards increases this

irreversibility

• e.g. Internet IP v4 - IP v6

ANT concept: Blackboxing

• Note black boxing is described here in the sense that ANT is used in II

research

• ANT offers flexibility in the granularity of analysis
• Important in IIs as they are both:

▫ Micro-phenomenon

 detailed design (code), protocols, patterns of local use

▫ Macro-phenomenon - actual infrastructure

 cutting across different user groups, large actors such as companies, industries, governmental regulators.

• ANT treats both large and small phenomenon equally and is suited to

analyses of both

• So to prevent over analysis at the macro level and to avoid having to go to

very micro levels of detail, it is possible to abstract or black box areas.

Next steps

• This is a very quick introduction to ANT in II
• You will need more depth
• Study II case studies:

▫ Hanseth & Monteiro 1997 - Inscribing behaviour in information infrastructure standards

• For a wonderful non II/IS case study which introduces and

descrives ANT concepts please read:

▫ Callon, M. (1986b). ‘Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’. Power, Action & Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? Law, J. (Ed). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London: 196-229. ▫ http://www.academia.edu/download/30572223/AsdalBrennaMo serTechnoscience.pdf#page=57