|
About the project on discourse and change We are interested in understanding, documenting, and rethinking the intersection of communication - written, spoken, visual, electronic - and social change as it occurs within human systems. We are specifically interested in change and technology: examining requirements for the emergence and instantiation of new technology but also the deployment of change as a technology -- as a deliberate and strategic effort to achieve specific objectives. Our work concerns the study of dynamic human systems; an effort to better understand and describe the forms, events, and deployments of social change; and an attempt to build empirical and conceptual models for examining and addressing change within and across human networks. The project is working on three emphasis areas: Empirical documentation of change; Organizations and the ethics of change; and Opposing and destabilizing change. Empirical Documentation of Change First, is an effort to empirically document forms and events at different temporal occurrences that instantiate change. This effort is currently creating a database of newspaper articles about the emergence of nanotechnology from first mention (1986) to current representations (2007). Previous projects examined efforts to document the introduction of a new IT system in a small university, a political campaign for national office in a rural Canadian riding ("district" in US), and a financial institution's efforts to reform its branch banking practices into investment services. Organizations and the ethics of change Second, is an effort to examine the ethics of change (Change, organizations, ethics). Here we are asking if it is appropriate to conceptualize an ethics about the strategic deployment of change within or across a network. This effort examined a deliberate organizational change at a small technical institute that required replacing faculty, reforming curriculum, and implementing new student codes of conduct and communication protocols. The question of ethics was also relevant in the study of IT implementation noted above. Opposing and destabilizing change Third, is a new effort to document forms and events related to opposing and destabilizing a change process. This effort commenced with a study of a debate within an electronic communityand the activities used by participants to defeat a proposed change.
Director The project is directed by Brenton Faber of North Carolina State University. bdfaber at ncsu dot edu |
Resources Home About Books Papers Websites Conferences Journals Working bibliography |