In its nearly half-century history the concept of social informatics has developed relatively independently in various scientific communities and various fields of science. Due to rapid technological changes, social informatics is subject to major changes in time, which further complicates its definition. In addition social informatics is also interdisciplinary and because of that it is particularly difficult to define the boarders. Within this framework, the diploma thesis attempts to find specific answers to the question of how the perception of social informatics is changing in global context. In the first part we first look at the past development of social informatics and we discuss possible classifications. In the empirical part, we systematically search the web and analyse the presence of the term »social informatics« in scientific production, in the titles of reserach institutes and study programs as well as in some other contexts .We can summarize that in general the frequency of the appearance of this term is in a sharp decline, although there are some exceptions. One of the major remaining places, where social informatics is regularly and explicitly present is the annual conference Socinfo, where the focus moves primarily in the technical – and only partially in the social – analysis of computer mediated communication.
|
