2024/02/21 by Sean Goggins, Kevin Lumbard, Goggins, Sean P. +6
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development #Open Source Software Innovations #Scientific Computing and Data Management #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.14172
openalex publication_date 2024/02/21 · openalex created_date 2024/02/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Sociotechnical research increasingly includes the social sub-networks that emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses these numerous sub-networks as advantageous for researchers. It provides a methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent social sub-networks during engaged field research. Specifically, we describe practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a more extensive technical infrastructure to another. To surface the importance of spanning sub-networks, we incorporate a discussion of social capital and the role of technical infrastructure in its development for sociotechnical researchers. We then characterize a five-step process for spanning social sub-networks during engaged field research: commitment, context mapping, jargon competence, returning value, and bridging. We then present our experience studying corporate open source software projects and the role of that experience in accelerating our work in open source scientific software research as described through the lens of bridging social capital. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations for engaging in fieldwork in adjacent social sub-networks that share a technical context and discussion of how the relationship between social and technically acquired social capital is a missing but critical methodological dimension for research on large-scale sociotechnical research.