Proposal Defense: Kar-Hai Chu, "Exploring How Technology Mediates the Types of Relationships Formed in Sociotechnical Systems" (4/30/2009)

This work presents an exploratory study of how technology affects and mediates the different types of relationships that are formed in sociotechnical systems. More people each day are connecting with each other through social networks, online communities, virtual environments, and other forms of sociotechnical systems. Whether for education, information seeking, friendships, work or other reasons, diverse technology-mediated relationships are being formed. This study explores the idea that these relationships are influenced by the affordances that technology provides. When a person navigates through a sociotechnical system, how they interact with other users can depend upon the mediating artifacts provided by the system. The resulting relationships that are built on these interactions are therefore affected by the technology. This work offers a framework for understanding how technology, user interactions, and user relationships are connected within a sociotechnical system, and uses this framework to uncover the kinds of interactions that take place in such systems, the relationships that are constituted by these interactions, and the influence of technology on these processes. Implications are drawn for how system designs can be improved to increase sociotechnical capital.