Evolution of social informatics: Publications, research, and educational activities

Abstract A comprehensive review of 1985–2019 trends related to the (English) term social informatics was conducted for scholarly literature, research and educational institutions, conferences, journals, blogs, and presentations at the International Conference on Social Informatics. The bibliographic search yielded 275 scientific documents with the term social informatics in the title, abstract, or keywords; which were coded according to ten characteristics. The analysis showed that corresponding scientific publications peaked in 2005–2009 and then roughly stagnated. At the same time, they increasingly spread worldwide, with most authors still referring to the concept of social informatics developed by Rob Kling. Other activities related to social informatics were mostly stagnant or slightly declining after 2010–2014, except for the number of educational courses. In contrast, the widespread general use of the term social informatics grew rapidly, especially in the context of computational social science. This is most evident in the analysis of 476 papers from the proceedings of International Conference on Social Informatics (2009–2019), which revealed a very weak identification with the notion of social informatics. Considering these findings, the prospects of social informatics are discussed in a broader context.