Social Impact and Information Systems
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Item Stakeholder and Value Orientation in Digital Social Innovation: Designing a Digital Donation Concept to Support Homeless Neighbors(2021-01-05) Gebken, Larissa; Drews, Paul; Schirmer, IngridDuring the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns, the infrastructure for supporting homeless neighbors disintegrated in many countries. As one important area of support, it became difficult to provide small donations to homeless neighbors. In an action design research-based project, as part of a national hackathon initiative and accelerator program, we contributed to the development of a digital donation concept. We frame this process as a digital social innovation for vulnerable people and highlight the need to consider stakeholder and value orientation during the design, implementation, and evaluation stages. Our findings include a reflection of the project course, a description of the developed concept, an analysis of how values shaped the design, and a formalization of learnings.Item Pictographs, Ideograms, and Emojis (PIE): A Framework for Empirical Research Using Non-verbal Cues(2021-01-05) Suntwal, Sandeep; Brown, Sue; Brandimarte, LauraWe propose an empirical framework to understand the impact of non-verbal cues across various research contexts. A large percentage of communication on the Internet uses text-driven non-verbal communication cues often referred to as emojis. Our framework proposes two types of factors to understand the impact of emojis. The first type consists of pictographs, ideograms, and emojis (PIE) factors such as usage, valence, position, and skin tone, and the second type consists of contextual factors depending on the research context, such as fake news, which has high social impact. We discuss how the effect of PIE factors and contextual factors can be used to measure belief, trust, reputation, and intentions across these contexts.Item Open or just Fragmented? Mobilization through Open Source Action Repertoires in the Blockchain Social Movement(2021-01-05) Ingram Bogusz, Claire; Andersen, JonasThe Blockchain social movement not only opposed the economic system in the post-2009 financial crisis years, it provided a tangible technological alternative, built in computer code and using Open Source (OS) principles. The social movement mobilized using familiar OS structures and activities as action repertoires. Although this openness encouraged mobilization, this ran the risk of losing control, as individuals used the OS code for their own purposes, outside the scope of the social movement. The use of OS action repertoires provided ways to coordinate, vent and build consensus. Further, the resulting dissent, when it occurred made the movement more relevant by extending the movement and mobilizing individuals in complementary areas, driven by economic incentives. The OS repertoire of open entrepreneurship also facilitated mobilization, making the movement more influential.Item Online Hate and its Routes to Aggression: A Research Agenda(2021-01-05) Ray, Argha; George, JoeyThe Internet has provided human civilization hitherto unimaginable tools with which to connect, communicate and coexist. Unfortunately, those same tools are being viciously maneuvered to spread ethno-racial and religious hatred and romanticize violence, where mass shooters are canonized as saints. The internet is now replete with vituperative chat rooms, web pages, discussion boards, forums, videos, music, and games that denigrate and bully marginalized outgroups either blatantly or through innuendoes. To that extent, it is almost impossible now to navigate through the internet without encountering hateful ideologies and propaganda that deepen societal fissures and instigate violence. Though journalism has put the spotlight on the link between online radicalization and real-world hate crimes, it is still an open empirical question. The existing evidence has been merely anecdotal interspersed with theoretical speculation and data driven empiricism cutting across scientific disciplines. This paper lays out a research agenda that may shed more light on this causal link between online hate and hate crimes.Item I Can’t Breathe: How Digital Video Becomes an Emancipatory Technology(2021-01-05) George, Jordana; George, Thomas; Moquin, RenéThis grounded theory study explores how bystander digital video distributed via social media documents perceived injustice and serves as an emancipatory technology. Using 30 examples, the study provides insight into how bystander videos impact perceived social injustice with potential visual evidence and how bystander videos ultimately shape larger social movements. We find that potential evidentiary video events break down into eight theoretical areas: instigation, target, place, perceived injustice, tools, witness, potential evidence, and outcomes. We find that while bystander video spread through social media can indeed serve as an emancipatory technology with substantial positive outcomes, care must be taken to avoid oversaturation that could result in desensitization and lower efficacy.Item Emancipation Research in Information Systems: Integrating Agency, Dialogue, Inclusion, and Rationality Research(2021-01-05) Young, Amber; Zhu, Yaping; Venkatesh, ViswanathEmancipation is a key concept in critical theories. Prior work suggests that emancipation is a complex and multi-faceted concept. Many conceptualizations of emancipation exist, and emancipation is defined in different ways. Existing empirical studies mainly focus on one or few components of emancipation. To have an integrated understanding of emancipation, we review the literature on emancipation in information systems (IS), with a view toward developing a typology of components of emancipation in the IS field. The typology of emancipation components consists of four components: freedom to act, freedom to express, freedom to belong and freedom to think. These components relate to the concepts of agency, dialogue, inclusion, and rationality, respectively.Item Digital Platform Workers under COVID-19: A Subaltern Perspective(2021-01-05) Masiero, SilviaDigital labour is widely depicted as a carrier of economic opportunities for poor and marginalised individuals. Such an orthodoxy is however questioned from research pointing at the structural vulnerabilities of digital work, vulnerabilities that the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted on a global scale. The central contribution of this paper is that subalternity theory offers the intellectual tools to understand the structural vulnerability of digital platform workers, setting the ground for studying emerging forms of collective resistance among them. Drawing on a data repository of web sources collected through the first four months of the COVID-19 crisis, it reveals the establishment of a mainstream discourse from platform representatives, the presence of forms of systematic devoicing among workers, and the emergence of a paternalistic attitude enacted by the platforms in continuity with the pre-crisis situation. Implications are drawn for the literature on digital labour, and for the study of emerging solidarity networks among workers subjected to subalternity.Item Can Digital Badging Support an Inclusive New Normal in Higher Education?(2021-01-05) Mcgovern, Terry; Gogan, JanisThis call for research considers how digital badging could help universities serve their students better and more flexibly, especially during crises (whether caused by public health issues, social unrest, or natural disasters). Touted as a means to recognize academic achievements and skills of both traditional and non-traditional students, digital badging can support personalized learning pathways by enabling individualized portfolios of micro-credentials. Also, badges can signify mastery at more granular levels than end-of-term course grades. In this review, we identify known digital badging opportunities and threats and consider a proposed micro-credentialing system based on college course modules rather than full courses. We then articulate directions for further research, guided by the theory of IT options and debt and the theory of complementary resources.Item Introduction to the Minitrack on Social Impact and Information Systems(2021-01-05) Jarvenpaa, Sirkka; George, Jordana; Young, Amber