Diskurz sociální informatiky: Metodologická východiska, myšlenkové školy a tematická konceptualizace

The presented conceptual monograph introduces social informatics primarily as a distinctive discipline. It focuses on the relations between seven regional schools of thought (British, Japanese, German, Norwegian, Russian, North American, Slovenian), between applied methodological approaches and between the different concepts that exist across the world under the label of social informatics. On this basis, it brings a new postmodern definition of social informatics which is based not on a certain regional perspective but on the current international discourse. This definition unites all the previously known regional perspectives included among the schools of thought of social informatics and to this end it also allows the inclusion of combined and self-declarative research referring to the label of social informatics. In order to introduce this view of social informatics, the book first mentions selected philosophical points of view connected with sociotechnical interaction and understanding of technology as a component of human culture. These fundamental reflections on technology are complemented by contemporary philosophical perspectives on information and communication technologies and their impact on society. This basis is common to social informatics and other areas such as human-computer interactions or the study and research of the information society and the Internet. Further attention is paid to the different ways of understanding informatics or, more precisely, the division of computing disciplines around the world as a starting point where social informatics is anchored by its name. These differences in the conception of informatics in the world are also reflected in the different thematic conceptions of social informatics in regional schools of thought and in applied methodological approaches. For these reasons, the book also looks in more detail at methodological approaches that are relevant to social informatics in different parts of the world. This book on social informatics is not only an overview of the different perspectives on social informatics based on a very fragmented community of social informaticians and different historical, ideological or methodological bases. The presented monograph seeks to be an imaginary bridge, which interconnects various perspectives of social informatics in the world and enables us to understand them. The book is therefore intended for a wide range of readers from natural, social and technical sciences and humanities who are interested in shaping the social and technical components in the information society. The new perspective on social informatics presented and discussed in this book can also support the further development and promotion of this discipline beyond the Czech and the Slovak Republic.