The E-Society:
Understanding the Restructuring of Practices and Institutions in the Digital Age
A Preliminary Overview of a New Research Programme for the
UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
[This is a preliminary draft of a proposed research initiative. An advanced notice of this new research programme, supported by Britain's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is available on the ESRC's Web site at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/E-Society.htm. Comments should be directed to Angelika Hamilton via e-mail on angelika.hamilton@esrc.ac.uk, telephone 01793 411922 or letter to The Economic and Social Research Council, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1UJ, UK.
Below is draft text of the proposal on the basis of which the ESRC decided to fund a research programme in this area. The proposal was developed through a consultancy led by Professor William H. Dutton. Please note that there might be changes to the Programme outline once the Programme Director is appointed.]
1. Executive Summary
New information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet and wireless multimedia devices, are an increasingly pervasive aspect of contemporary society.1 The technologies are widely seen as a key element tied to broadly-based change in social structures and practices, such as in the erosion of hierarchy and rise of networked organisations.2 Fifteen years of ESRC research on ICTs has challenged uncritical assumptions about the social implications of the coming 'information society' or 'digital age' as an inevitable force for progress.3 Deepening these understandings is even more important as the technologies advance and become ubiquitous.
However, with the conclusion of its Virtual Society? Programme this year, the Council has no other planned, broad, long-term programme with a focus on the social aspects of ICTs (see Annex 3). This proposal recommends investment in a new and distinctive 'e-Society' Programme to take forward the foundations laid by previous ESRC research on ICTs and provide fresh insights into enduring questions about the quality of our lives now, and in the future. It would develop a critical, interdisciplinary analysis within an integrative framework. By informing policy and practice proactively, it would assist people to shape technology, institutions and practices in beneficial ways.
2. Programme Objectives
The central question addressed by the Programme would be: How are institutions and practices being restructured in the digital age?4 This would lead the Programme to focus on: a) the continuities and discontinuities in practices and institutions - community, governmental, economic and cultural; b) the roles of technical, social and economic factors in shaping these patterns; and c) the social, economic, ethical and regulatory implications of the restructuring of institutions and practices.
No limit would be placed on the particular institutions or practices to be studied. Growing interest in virtual communities, the new economy, e-commerce, digital government and online media, for example, suggest these will entail changes in practices such as how people socialise, work, shop, get the news and receive commercial and public services. Households, firms, public organisations, the media, education and other service providers would therefore be among the institutions open to study. The test would be whether projects have the potential for advancing theory or methods for the study of the central Programme question, and in furthering three other key objectives:
2.1. Focus critical, interdisciplinary theory and research on the restructuring of practices and institutions tied to how people produce, utilise, consume and govern ICTs. An empirical perspective would inform debate over the opportunities and risks arising from the restructuring of practices and institutions across a wide range of technologies in all sectors of society. The Programme would focus on emerging ICTs, but seek to incorporate a historical perspective that explores patterns of continuity as well as change, drawing lessons from other erstwhile 'new' technologies, such as the telephone, videotex and cable.
2.2. Develop new data and theoretical perspectives on key research questions, such as social inclusion-exclusion, while fostering innovative quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches to social research on ICTs. New media often require new methods, such as in the study of log files to understand Web usage patterns. However, the Programme should also support proven approaches to gathering empirical observations from multiple vantage points, such as survey research, content analysis, participant-observation, case studies, ethnography and natural experiments. In all cases, a focus on change requires methods that enable observations over time, including historical case studies, longitudinal analyses of secondary data and panel designs for survey research.
2.3. Ensure that results are effective in informing policies, visions, practices and research. This can be furthered by developing theory, concepts and data applicable to issues of policy and practice in multiple domains. Support would be provided to encourage dialogue between e-Society researchers and the technical, policy and practitioner community, focusing on the future of technologies, institutions and practices.
3. Rationale for the Programme
3.1. Why a Programme? Why Now?
The production and use of new ICTs throughout society is supported by business, industry and Government.5 At the same time, there is evidence of growing 'digital divide' inequalities6 and renewed doubts about the sustainability of rapid ICT growth, as highlighted by the recent business 'dot-com crash' and concerns about the economic viability of next-generation mobile licences.
Technological change remains uncertain, and cannot be separated from social, economic, cultural and political change. However, technology forecasts tend to focus on technical innovation. This has contributed to a poor track-record in experts' predictions of technological change, such as in early expectations of the telephone being used primarily for broadcasting, or that the Internet would fizzle out like CB-radio.7 Nevertheless, as ICTs have become more taken for granted, critical perspectives on their social and economic aspects have been marginalised by a focus on technical R&D. A more intensive and cumulative research effort focused on ICTs across different social settings in now needed in order to deepen understanding of how people design, incorporate, adapt or reject technologies to reinforce or restructure practices and institutions.
3.2. Scientific Context
Social and economic aspects of ICTs have been studied by a wide variety of researchers and practitioners for over fifty years.8 This work ranges from early studies on the interrelations between technology and society, to technology assessments, and investigations of the impacts of technology, to more recent work on the social shaping of technology and the application of mainstream social science research approaches to the study of new media. However, the development of a cumulative body of knowledge in this field has been hampered by its fragmented, interdisciplinary research history, and the rapid innovation that has changed technological contexts before knowledge could be consolidated. The proposed e-Society framework would overcome this fragmentation by focusing on the restructuring of practices and institutions tied to underlying processes of change in technologies and social relations.
3.3. Practical and Policy Context
Technology policy is a central aspect of national industrial policies as well as a key to the strategic plans of all kinds of organisations, from major firms and not-for-profits to home-based teleworkers. Public acceptance of a technology can facilitate the changes in practice and policy needed to exploit the technology more effectively. Failure to understand and anticipate the problems, as well as opportunities, arising from the technology can undermine positive change, as when unemployment concerns tied to automation divert investment from ICTs that enable job creation and increased productivity.9 Research that takes a sceptical and empirical perspective on the many social and economic assumptions tied to technological change is therefore of crucial practical significance.
3.4. Relevance and Contribution to ESRC's Thematic Priorities
A review of ESRC Themes pointed out how interaction between technology and people has come to pervade all ESRC Thematic Priorities.10 The Foresight exercise also found that the "pervasiveness of information management across every area of innovative opportunity makes ICTs particularly key to the economy and society more generally".11 In addition, Foresight has initiated successive competitions for research on the social shaping of technology. In this context, an ESRC e-Society Programme provides a focus that can advance research on technology and people, inform policy and practice and build on the international networks and reputation the ESRC has gained through ongoing support of social research on ICTs.
4. Profile of the Programme
4.1. Research Areas and Topics: Conceptual Framework and Integrating Themes
The Programme's proposed conceptual framework builds on a synthesis of ESRC research to focus on the four interlinked processes of producing, using, consuming and governing ICTs.12 Studies anchored in each of these, and the interrelationships among them, would identify cross-cutting patterns and themes that further integrate the findings of individual projects. For example, users are also involved in production, and government has a critical role in the production, utilisation and consumption -- as well as governance -- of ICTs. This framework would help to ensure that the social analysis of technology is as relevant at the early stages of design, as when ICTs are in everyday use. It would encourage more cumulativeness of findings across technologies, institutions and practices, integration across disciplines and the analyses of indeterminate social processes, rather than the deterministic forecasts of the social impacts of ICTs which have so often been wrong.
A key Programme-wide contribution would be to identify integrating themes and concepts. These will emerge from e-Society studies on the restructuring of practices and institutions, including examinations of continuities and discontinuities in structures, and the nature and implications of forces facilitating and constraining change. Themes related to changes in structures and processes could include networking, scale, standardisation, decentralisation and the erosion of boundaries. Themes related to their social implications might include patterns of change in access, privacy, trust, identity, immediacy, dependence on ICTs, and the geography of social relations. New research issues and integrating themes are likely to be identified in the course of e-Society research.
The Programme should incorporate projects centred under each of the four headings. The following sub-sections illustrate the range of questions and topics. While casting a wide net, the Programme would select proposals for funding based on the project's likely contribution to the central question concerning the restructuring of practices and institutions.
4.1.1. Production
Social, cultural and political processes shape innovations in products, services and industries, including the structure of industry. This raises questions about production, such as:
What practices and institutional arrangements are facilitating and constraining how ICT designs are conceived, developed and brought into public use rapidly? How do industry structures change through the use of ICT-based capabilities, such as e-commerce networks? How do different cultures and regulatory regimes impinge on the production of information and communication services? How can the UK knowledge and skills base be better balanced across regions, gender, age and other sectors? What are the barriers to synergy from digital convergence? How is digital multimedia convergence through Internet, mobile and other capabilities shaped by the cultures, practices and economics of formerly separate media and information production industries - and how does convergence shape the underlying models of these industries? How do business models change when the primary product for exchange is information that can be replicated and redistributed at virtually no cost, for instance by sharing popular music or scholarly journals over the Web?
4.1.2. Utilisation
The way technologies are used in service provision, management and work can reinforce or transform the structure, geography and processes of organisations, in which social and organisational change is inseparable from technological change. Key related questions include:
Are new forms of e-democracy practices and institutions emerging which affect citizen representation and public accountability? Are new technologies enabling fundamental shifts in the geography of institutions and organisational forms, for example in fostering the globalisation of networked firms and activities? How is this affecting productivity and the geography of employment? How do private firms and public services, such as education, compete with globally-branded online suppliers? To what extent are people using ICTs to by-pass formal public services, such as by accessing online self-help? How do ICTs change the competitive landscape? How are they used to integrate commercial and public service processes in public-private partnerships? Are new structures emerging to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and self-employed people exploit ICT capabilities fully? How are ICTs used by not-for-profit organisations? What are the practices, structures and social ties of geographically dispersed virtual communities? Are new decentralised, non-hierarchical organisational forms emerging? How do people employ e-mail, mobile-phone text messaging and other ICTs within complex processes of personal and social relationships? How do ICT-mediated relationships undermine or reinforce community?
4.1.3. Consumption
The focus on consumption is concerned with how people incorporate, adapt, domesticate, subvert, resist and otherwise shape how ICTs fit into the household, community, education, democratic processes and everyday life. This leads to questions such as:
How do different cultures, genders, classes and ethnic, age and disability groups use ICTs? Is uneven access to ICTs fostering a new technological underclass and powerful cyberclass, or reinforcing socioeconomic divisions? Can greater equity and new forms of social cohesion be fostered? What are the social implications of the immediacy and proximity of online access to information, people and services, for instance in relation to information overload, social isolation and collective memory? Will the enhanced ability of producers to target specific audiences using ICTs help to better inform more people, or reinforce knowledge gaps? How, and with what implications, are central, regional and local governments using e-government capabilities? How does the growing use of ICTs in all sectors of education influence institutions and practices, such as how and where we learn? Are boundaries blurred or eliminated by ICTs being reconfigured in new ways, such as between 'office' and 'home', or in a demise of the 'public sphere'?
4.1.4. Governance
Studies of governance examine the political and social processes of control that regulate technology and balance competing values and interests, including the role of technological change in governance processes. Related questions include:
What public policies and regulations best serve the 'public interest' in an e-society? Can governance keep pace with the ICT-enabled changes in other institutions and processes? To what extent are ICTs creating a potential for power shifts in relations between citizens, public and private actors in local, regional and global arenas of governance, such as within a so-called 'e-Europe'? How far have national and regional regulatory mechanisms been eroded through transnational networks in areas such as privacy, surveillance, cybercrime and intellectual property rights? Do multimedia networks increase centralisation or encourage more active citizenship through enhanced localised democratic processes? How does electronic service delivery, such as NHS Direct, redefine the nature, regulation and perception of public services? How do ICTs affect competition and co-operation between localities and nations, such as in efforts to attract jobs and investment? Are voluntary and issue-based organisations moving into the democratic centre-ground via the Web? Can people who are 'unwired' to ICTs participate in an e-society? What forms of public control are being sought over ICT developments, such as Internet censorship or encouraging socially-valuable ICT innovations?
4.2. Contributing Disciplines and Opportunities for Interdisciplinary Research
The e-Society Programme would bring sociologists, anthropologists, economists, policy scientists, social psychologists, historians and computer scientists together under a coherent interdisciplinary umbrella for research. Intellectual synergy will be promoted across all the social science traditions by moving away from disciplinary perspectives and towards the study of underlying processes. Collaborations and information exchanges would also be sought in other ESRC research activities, particularly those examining the contexts within which ICTs are becoming embedded, such as the Innovation, Future Governance and Future of Work Programmes. In addition, there would be scope to build on the EPSRC's strong interest in Technology and People, for example in extending existing funding partnerships such as PACCIT and IMI. Similarly, there may be opportunities to build a partnership with the AHRB, particularly in relation to multimedia developments. The Programme would also help UK social scientists to more fully exploit opportunities provided by EU-supported research, such as on the social shaping of ICTs through the Framework Programme and application-oriented IT research supported by the Information Society Project Office.
4.3. Resource Needs and Implications
A key goal of the e-Society Programme would be to develop and employ innovative methods of social research on ICTs, for which specific funding should be provided. Within the programme specification we would encourage applications for a large scale survey aimed at gathering a dataset capable of addressing questions on a variety of issues and technologies, for example the relationship between Internet use and social isolation.13 The programme should permit one project budget to be resourced at a level that would enable it to incur the costs of such data collection. This would also provide baseline data to further longitudinal research in a 2nd phase, which would better enable the researchers to address causal questions of change over time. In addition, facilities, such as electronic networking, should be provided to encourage co-operative work and cross-project collaboration.
4.4. Involvement of Users
The Programme would engage actively in research activities with key policy and practitioner users from industry, including SMEs, government and not-for-profit groups. Users could be involved in research projects and a variety of other activities, such as advisory committees, workshops, forums and conference sponsorship.14 Government concern about issues around ICTs across a wide range of policy areas would be addressed, including those highlighted in the recent White Paper Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy, and in Information Age projects such as UK Online and a national grid for learning, led by the DfEE. Workshops, forums and conferences would focus on specific e-Society issues, such as institutional change in education envisioned by initiatives in distributed learning, or how e-commerce affects social exclusion-inclusion.
4.5. Management and Dissemination of the Programme
A Director would be appointed by the ESRC to manage the Programme. The Director would co-ordinate the research projects, assisted by a Steering Committee providing direct links to research users in Government and the private sector. In addition to administering the Programme efficiently, the Director's responsibility would be to ensure that the Programme builds on past ESRC investments in ICT research, extends the range and cumulative impact of the Programme's research, and implements an effective Communication Strategy. This should include the establishment of Web and electronic dissemination capabilities, with sufficient resources to be maintained effectively. Synthesis books and policy papers would supplement outputs of individual projects. The Director should therefore be willing to play more than an administrative and co-ordinating role in the research. Other mechanisms, which have been used successfully in ESRC Programmes, include policy and theme-based workshops and forums that bring together practitioners, policy-makers and researchers from a variety of disciplines, including technical, the arts and humanities.
4.6. Resources and Implementation of the Programme
The scope and national significance of the proposed Programme, together with the research focus on change-over-time, would be best approached through longitudinal research spanning two phases, each of three years.
Technical Annex
Notes
1. For example, by the end of 2000, 32% of UK households could access the Internet from home and 45% of adults had accessed it at some time (Office for National Statistics,19 December 2000, Internet Access, see: http://www.statistics.gov.uk). In addition, 54% of adults in the UK had a mobile phone in August 2000 (Oftel, August 2000, Consumers' Use of Mobile Telephony, http://www.oftel.gov.uk).
2. For example, see: Castells, M (2000), The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell), and Giddens, A (2000), Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping our Lives (Routledge).
3. Includes the 1985-95 Programme on Information and Communications Technologies (PICT) (see Dutton W H (1996) (ed.), Information and Communication Technologies - Visions and Realities (Oxford University Press), the Media Economics & Media Culture Programme, and the Virtual Society? Programme, see http://www.virtualsociety.org.uk and Woolgar S (2000): Virtual Society? Profile 2000 (University Oxford: Saïd Business School).
4. The Programme would be open to alternative definitions of structures, institutions and practices and avoid identification with a specific approach, such as the 'new institutionalism'. (see: March, J G and Olson, J. P. (1989) Rediscovering Institutions, New York: The Free Press).
5. For example, the Government 'UK Online' initiative aims to make Britain "the best place in the world for e-commerce, with universal access to the Internet and all Government services on the net" (see: http://www.number-10.gov.uk).
6. The Virtual Society? Programme found the fears and risks associated with ICTs are unevenly distributed socially (Woolgar 2000). The Office for National Statistics (19 December 2000) reported: "levels of access depend very strongly on income", with 62% of the highest-income households accessing the Internet and 7% of the poorest, a point supported by PICT, as in Dutton, W H (1999), Society on the Line (Oxford University Press), 238-41.
7. For example, a noted economist with an expertise in telecommunications speculated that the Internet could be analogous to the CB-radio (see: Owen, B M (1999) The Internet Challenge to Television, Harvard University Press).
8. Dutton (1999, op. cit.): 19-46 gives an overview of this research, based on PICT studies.
9. For example, see Freeman, C 'The Factory of the Future and the Productivity Paradox' in Dutton (1996, op. cit.): 123-41.
10. Halpern, D (2000), Synoptic Report of Submissions to the 1999-2000 ESRC Thematic Priorities Review, an unpublished ESRC paper, suggests the ubiquitous influence of new technologies makes it difficult to organise work around a 'Technology and People' Theme.
11. Stout, D (1999), 'ICTs and Technology Foresight', in Dutton (1999 op. cit.): 333-5.
12. These categories originated from a synthesis of PICT research in Dutton (1996) op. cit.. They were developed further in the unpublished ESRC paper, Dutton W H (2000), The Web of Technology and People: Challenges for Economic and Social Research, published as Dutton W H (1999), 'The Web of Technology and People', Prometheus, 17(1), 5-20.
13. Access to secondary data sources, and the addition of questions to ongoing survey efforts, such as the ESRC-funded British Household Panel Survey, should also be considered.
14. The PICT and the Virtual Society? Programme demonstrated the value of such efforts.
Annex 1
How the Programme was Developed
This proposal is the product of collaboration. Annex 1 provides an overview of how this proposal was developed. Special thanks are owed to many colleagues who commented on early drafts, accessible on the Web. Some of these colleagues were able to attend a one day forum hosted by the London Business School, which was a major influence on the substance of the proposed programme. All those consulted are listed in Annex 2.
Annex 2
Experts Consulted
The following provided comments on the initial draft proposal. (* Indicates attendance at the consultation forum at the London Business School on 19 December 2000.)
Annex 3
List of Current and Related Research