Welcome to the Social Studies of Information. This website, and the associated email list, bring together a community of scholars from different iSchools interested in integrating interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of information and information technology.

Many scholars within information schools draw on perspectives from the social sciences and humanities in their work, but usually we are scattered across many different fields such as information history, archival studies, internet studies, ethics, philosophy of information, and information policy. These are all well-defined research communities, but they have grown up largely separate and few can attain critical mass within any given iSchool. Inspired by the success of science and techology studies (STS), the vision of SSI is to build connections between these areas to build a new overarching community.

The website is maintained by Thomas Haigh of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Siegen University. He was the lead organizer of the 2014 iConference workshop “Exploring the Social Studies of Information” and from 2012-2016 was the founding chair of the Social Studies of Information research group at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee which ran a vibrant speaker series. As a member of the Institute for Social Studies of Information at Siegen University since 2016 he has been the lead organizer of three workshops exploring the “Early Digital” and an interdisciplinary conference, Computing is Work.