This essay is a study of the use of IT technology by teachers of English and History at a Swedish upper secondary school. It is based on four interviews and four observations. In my analysis of these I have made use of the theory of Social Shaping of technology, a theory which puts emphasis on a teacher´s purpose regarding the use of IT technology in order to empower the teaching process. As a researcher I aim to explore the reasoning on the part of the teacher and to that end I use the method of interviews and observations. This study shows different ways of using IT technology varying from one teacher to another. The use of laptops and Ipads by students is frequent, laptops being used for writing and information seeking and Ipads for taking pictures, the recording of students´ own performance before making presentations in class and for communication with teachers. In addition to the methods mentioned above, I have used - "Som-seende" and half-structured interviews.

Africa’s way forward requires integration, democracy, good governance, participation and inclusive communication of all issues. Intergovernmental organizations are essential to facilitate the above mentioned goals. New thinking highlights the role of new media especially the Internet in democracy and governance in Africa. Therefore, the question solicited here is whether e-governance facilitates continental governance in Africa and under what circumstances would this be possible? This research introduced the internet (web) as a distinct medium of communications with distinct features and characteristics. A number of scholars argue that the Internet as a distinct medium of communication can better facilitate the democratizing role of the media in society, while others argues that the internet has not changed the nature of politics since ordinary politics in all its complexity and vitality has invaded and captured cyberspace. These arguments are divided respectively between Technological Determinism and the Social Shaping of Technology. This research investigates (AU, EU and Nepad) e-governance websites in order to understand practices, prospects and challenges of continental e-governance systems. It was found that the AU and Nepad use the websites for institutional information rather than interaction with citizens and online service delivery. However, significant steps are taken to enhance interaction in Nepad. It is therefore recommended that, the AU and Nepad need to invest time and commitment in enhancing interactivity and rising awareness for these e-governance systems. As projected, EU performs much better than the above two in terms of interactivity. This is because it has more experience and internet penetration and uses is widespread in Europe than it is here in Africa.

Il blog ha compiuto un percorso di rapido sviluppo, diventando spesso nei discorsi sociali l'emblema di un modo di intendere la rete che ha preso oggi l'etichetta di “Web 2.0”. La sua diffusione non è solo l'esito di una particolare configurazione tecnologica, ma anche di un intreccio di dinamiche economiche, sociali e culturali che hanno mutato la loro forma nel tempo. Lo scopo del presente lavoro è quello di seguire la traiettoria di questo sviluppo, individuandone gli snodi critici attraverso gli strumenti concettuali forniti dal paradigma del Social Shaping of Technology applicato, in questo caso, ad un oggetto che combina la duplice natura di artefatto culturale e strumento di Comunicazione Mediata da Computer. A questo scopo si è, in primo luogo, ricostruita l'evoluzione storica del blog, rileggendola poi alla luce delle quattro dimensioni istituzionale, economica, tecnologica e culturale, da cui è emersa la centralità della figura dell'autore del blog. Su questa base si è articolato un percorso di ricerca sul campo, condotto con una metodologia qualitativa e multi-situata, al fine di evidenziare le dinamiche di appropriazione microsociale del blog, in cui sono stati individuati gli aspetti cruciali del suo modellamento sociale. / Weblogs developed very rapidly during the last years, by often becoming the symbol of the recognition of the Web as “Web 2.0” in the social discourses. Not only is its diffusion the outcome of a particular technological configuration, but also of a network of economical, social, cultural factors that have changed their shape in the course of time. The goal of this research is to follow the path of this development through the conceptual frame provided by the Social Shaping of Technology applied, in this case, to an object that is both an artefact and a form of Computer Mediated Communication. Firstly, to the purpose, the historical evolution of blog has been reconstructed; then, the trend of the institutional, economical, technological, cultural dimensions has been outlined whereas the author's central role in blog's dynamics emerged. On this basis a field research was carried out and accomplished with a qualitative, multi-sited methodology, in order to highlight the microsocial blog processes of appropriation, in which the main aspects of social shaping has been identified.

This study examines the social shaping of digital radio in Europe and provides new insights about the main competing technologies and the discourses built around their capabilities. The radio frequency spectrum is a limited resource and in order to be used in the most efficient way different organizations have been researching optimizing standards since the mid-1980s. The Eureka-147 project produced the first European digital broadcasting standard DAB whose development have been initially fostered by public service broadcasters and electronics manufacturers, consequently by commercial broadcasters and governmental institutions. The design and policy of DAB did not manage to grasp the attention and support of all the actors present in the nascent digital radio industry. A decade after its launch DAB was followed by other digital radio standards, as DAB+ and DRM, in the role of complements/competitors. At the same time the Internet started to be used as infrastructure for delivering radio or sound entertainment content. Thirty years after the beginning of the European digital radio experience, the picture is still complex and no technology achieved a complete and harmonized implementation. Across Europe, countries have been involved in the digitalization of radio to different extent: Norway announced FM transmissions shutdown in 2017, UK and Switzerland have developed an almost nationally wide digital network coverage and are about to run their switchover plans, some other countries as Sweden and Italy are still in a transmission-trial and evaluation phase. The history of digital radio in Europe offers ground for a Social Shaping of Technology analysis as exposed in “The Social construction of technological systems” (1987) by Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes and Trevor Pinch. The Social Shaping of Technology claims that technologies and their outcomes are always socially negotiated. According to this theoretical framework and in particular to the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) methodology, it is possible to highlight a number of social groups negotiating the final technology in the development of every artefact. In particular SCOT allows to find points of interpretative flexibility, namely diverging interpretations that different groups have of a same technology or a particular feature of it. These arguments or discourses are built around a technology or its features in order to foster a particular concerns of the corresponding group. This master thesis analyses the development of digital radio in Europe according to the framework provided by the Social Shaping of Technology, enriching the number of case studies that have been conducted following this framework. In this way the dissertation “The Social Shaping of European Digital Radio” provides an overview on the social, political and economic forces which negotiated the technology throughout its development and provides a deeper understanding of the overall digital media technology industry.

This master's thesis is a grounded theory study of the development of the Internet as a tool for political action in Japan by groups and individuals producing web pages on the issue of history textbook reform. Through the analysis of 14 in-depth interviews, a framework is developed for understanding the role the Internet has taken in political action in Japan. As activists utilize the Internet in political activism, the Internet appears to be developing into an anchor for continuing political activism. For activists, the Internet is a central point of reference for both mass communication and interpersonal communication activities. The model indicates that the political alignment of an activist is an important factor in determining his or her preference for either interpersonal or mass communication on the Internet. Activists on the left tend to use the Internet as a tool for interpersonal communication and coordination, while activists on the right tend to view the Internet as a tool for mass persuasion. The model of Internet activism developed in the thesis is also compared with models of communication derived from theories of technological determinism and social shaping of technologies. Consistent with technological determinist ideas, the Japanese case demonstrates that as activists rely on the Internet, other media show signs of becoming content for the new medium. However, the Japanese case also shows that pre-existing needs and the political framework of an activist have a strong shaping effect on Internet use, indicating the importance of a social shaping of technologies approach.

The discourse that surrounds and constitutes the post-human emerged as a response to earlier claims of an essential or universal human or human nature. These discussions claim that the human is a discursive construct that emerges from various configurations of nature, embodiment, technology, and culture, configurations that have also been variously shaped by the forces of social history. And in the absence of an essential human figure, post-human discourses suggest that there are no restrictions or limitations on how the human can be reconfigured. This axiom has been extended in light of a plethora of technological reconfigurations and augmentations now potentially available to the human, and claims emerge from within this literature that these new technologies constitute a range of possibilities for future human biological evolution. This thesis questions the assumption contained within these discourses that technological incursions or reconfigurations of the biological human necessarily constitute human biological or human social evolution by discussing the role the evolution theories plays in our understanding of the human, the social, and technology. In this thesis I show that, in a reciprocal process, evolution theory draws metaphors from social institutions and ideologies, while social institutions and ideologies simultaneously draw on metaphors from evolution theory. Through this discussion, I propose a form of evolution literacy; a tool, I argue, is warranted in developing a sophisticated response to changes in both human shape and form. I argue that, as a whole, our understanding of evolution constitutes a metanarrative, a metaphor through which we understand the place of the human within the world; it follows that historical shifts in social paradigms will result in new definitions of evolution. I show that contemporary evolution theory reflects parts of the world as codified informatic systems of associated computational network logic through which the behaviour of participants is predefined according to an evolved or programmed structure. Working from within the discourse of contemporary evolution theory I develop a space through which a version of the post-human figure emerges. I promote this version of the post-human as an Artificial Intelligence computational programme or autonomous agent that, rather than seeking to replace, reduce or deny the human subject, is configured as an exosomatic supplement to and an extension of the biological human.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:15:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 61070100602.pdf: 2271716 bytes, checksum: 1591caad19bbef39421e07ed5e252fd9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-04-14T00:00:00Z / Esta dissertação tem o objetivo de estudar, sob a ótica sócio-construtivista, o processo de determinação do padrão de televisão digital no Brasil. Com base no referencial teórico conhecido como The Social Shaping of Technology, foi possível realizar a descrição detalhada do processo de construção social desta tecnologia enfatizando os principais conceitos e como eles se articularam durante a interação dos grupos sociais envolvidos no processo até o fechamento de seu desenvolvimento. O processo de determinação do padrão de televisão digital foi reconstruído com base em documentos de domínio público, baseado em uma abordagem interpretativa. / The objective of this master dissertation is to study the determination process of the Brazilian digital terrestrial television standard using social-constructivism approach. Based on The Social Shaping of Technology Theory, a detailed description on the social construction of the technology was done, by emphasizing the main concepts of the theoretical framework developed in the Social Construction of Technology. By doing so, it was demonstrated how the relevant social groups articulated and negotiated based on their visions and interests about the technology. The process was reconstructed based on historical evidences, utilizing an interpretative and qualitative research.

This study focuses on the factors shaping innovation in online newsrooms in three nations of the Arab World, with particular interest in the adoption of multimedia news innovations. Applying theoretical perspectives from the social shaping of technology and the diffusion of innovation literature, this study sought to identify the key factors shaping the innovation process. Field studies were based in three Arabic newsrooms: Aljazeera Net in Qatar, Almasry Alyoum in Egypt, and Almassae in Morocco. The case studies are grounded in two weeks of participant-observation field research within each online newsroom, along with over 100 in-depth interviews with those involved in the production of online news, and online archival reviews of the three news portals since their inception. Field research began with participant observation at Aljazeera in 2010, prior to the uprisings of the Arab Spring, and continued through early 2013. The political context of each newsroom during the field research became a major aspect of the innovation process of each case study. The thesis reinforces a wide range of social, economic, and organizational factors in the adoption and adaptation of multimedia technologies in the newsrooms studied, supporting earlier research on newsroom innovation across other regions of the world. For example, conceptions about ‘ideal’ industry multimedia models for the modern newsroom were important in each case. However, in the political context of events related to the Arab Spring, the overriding importance of the larger political context emerged in each case. The significance of this observation suggests that research on news organizations cannot take the political context for granted and should more explicitly embed it in discussion of the social shaping of innovation, even under more stable and liberal political conditions. There is a relative lack of systematic empirical research on Arabic newsrooms among studies of news innovation. Looking at the political context of emergent or weak democracies and their influence on modern multimedia newsrooms especially during crisis events, therefore, can contribute to the development of theory and research in Western democracies; and reintroduce politics into theories of innovation within modern newsrooms. This study suggests that future scholarship brings politics into the study of the social shaping of newsroom innovation without losing the many significant advances of existing research in more liberal democratic Western contexts of the multimedia newsroom.