Anita Greenhill

• The University of Manchester

Online social games, played within social networks or games requiring social interaction with peers, are revolutionizing the nature of video-games due to their social aspect and the ability of users to compare their performance with their friends or people in their network. Social comparison features, such as leaderboards, individual scores, achiev...

The concept of social capital has attracted much attention from researchers and policy makers, largely due to links with positive social outcomes and philanthropic acts such as volunteering and donations. However, a rapid growth in internet technologies and social media networks has fundamentally affected the formation of social capital, as well as...

Advances in Internet technology are making it possible for individuals to volunteer online and participate in research-based activities of nonprofit organizations. Using survey data from a representative sample of such contributors, this study investigates their motivations to volunteer for five online volunteering projects using the Volunteer Func...

The concept of social capital has attracted much attention from researchers and policy makers, largely due to the strong theoretical and empirical evidence linking it with a variety of positive social outcomes; including philanthropic acts such as volunteering and donations. However, the rapid growth in Internet technologies and social media networ...

The ontological turn in organisational capabilities theorising has pitched methodological individualism against methodological collectivism. Although illuminating in their own right, it has been acknowledged that reconciling this dichotomy holds the key to unlocking the capabilities paradox. In this work we attempt to provide a solution to this mic...

New democratic participation forms and collaborative productions of diverse audiences have emerged as a result of digital innovations in the online access to and consumption of news. The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework based on the possibilities of Web 2.0. outlining the construction of a "social logic", which combines comput...

The rapid growth in Internet technology is making it possible to volunteer in online settings, with participants able to contribute directly to research-based activities supporting non-profit groups and charitable organisations. This study undertakes an investigation into the profile and motivations of contributors to these online volunteering proj...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine intrinsic forms of motivation and particular incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement on an online crowdsourced citizen science platform. The paper also investigates gamised activity (Greenhill et al., 2014) as a form of intrinsic motivation adding a sense of play to work and tasks (Xu e...

This paper gives a voice to a range of community and individual stakeholders who would not generally be heard in the conventional town planning process. We present a methodological technique, described as creative prototyping, that has at its heart, the capability to enable full stakeholder inclusivity into the future imagining of the smart city. A...

We investigate the development of scientific content knowledge of volunteers participating in online citizen science projects in the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), including the astronomy projects Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) and Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org). We use econometric methods to test how measures of project participation rel...

The broad view of projectification and the broader perspective on constant connectivity have produced insights that question the conventional wisdom. However, how project practices are mediated by constant connectivity is under-explored and under-theorized. We conduct a case study of the interplay between consulting project work practices and const...

We investigate the development of scientific content knowledge of volunteers participating in online citizen science projects in the Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org), including the astronomy projects Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) and Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org). We use econometric methods to test how measures of project participation rel...

Purpose: The paper offers a perspective on the operations of retail businesses in the high street as they adapt to the rising influence of the digital economy. We reveal some of the new challenges being posed by the changing growth and consumption patterns in cities that are coupled with shifting macro-supply chain trends. Design: The study is co...

Cloud computing represents a connection of internet technologies and personal or business computing that is changing the way computing solutions are designed, delivered and managed. This model of computing where all data, application, are hosted over a network is a significant shift from the traditional model of computing where data, software's res...

Cloud Computing has developed into a catchphrase in industry today. It has become ever-present in the digital era as a result of the propagation of the Internet. It is one of the hottest topics in IT/IS and has become of significant interest to practitioners and academics due to its economic value. However, the benefits of cloud computing will not...

Although current literature highlights a wide variety of potential citizen science project outcomes, no prior studies have systematically assessed performance against a comprehensive set of criteria. The study reported here is the first to propose a novel framework for assessing citizen science projects against multiple dimensions of success. The a...

While the literature highlights a wide variety of potential citizen science project outcomes, no prior studies have systematically assessed performance against a comprehensive set of criteria. Our study is the first to propose a novel framework for assessing citizen science projects against multiple dimensions of success. We apply this framework to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to understand the influence that the social era is having on the value chain of the local news industry. The authors theoretically advance value chain theory by, firstly, considering the influence of community type and age on consumption and, secondly, exploring the role that...

Purpose: This paper develops a conceptual framework to unde rstand the influence that the social era is having on the value chain of the local news industry. We theoretically advance value chain theory by firstly, considering the influence of community type and age on consumption and secondly exploring the role that consumers can play in value addi...

The practice of daily prayers in Islam and how observances such as Ramadan fall each year follow specific solar or lunar calendars different from the Gregorian calendar of UK work places. Identifying the time for daily prayers and finding a place to practise is a skilled activity requiring ways to ascertain the correct (and changing) time and a pla...

The fictional prototype uses imaginative narratives based explicitly on science fact as a design tool in the development of technology. Through traditional research and development we begin to define and understand what a technology is. This is the typical work that is going on in industrial labs and universities all over the world. Usually this wo...

This paper examines incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement to consider how these forms of social interaction relate to the serious gaming elements of the citizen science platform. Through an ethnographic study we reveal how participants of citizen science projects demonstrate aspects of ‘Gamised’ behaviour. ‘Gamised’ behaviour is defin...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to gain insight into craft and do-it-yourself (DIY) communities of practice (COPs) and how the use of technology provides ways for participants to connect, share and create. By gaining a deeper insight into the practices of these communities it may provide new opportunities to utilise further developments with...

In this paper, we reflect on the disciplinary contours of contemporary sociology, and social science more generally, in the age of ‘big and broad’ social data. Our aim is to suggest how sociology and social sciences may respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by this ‘data deluge’ in ways that are innovative yet sensitive to the socia...

The 2014 Budget - it's a day of important announcements, striking sentiments, grand gestures, and an awful lot of reactionary statements. This year's Budget announcements however have stimulated social media enthusiasts, largely via Twitter, to creatively voice their opinions and give us an instantaneous insight into their reactions to the events...

How can local newspapers survive in a digital age? Gray Graham and Anita Greenhill examine findings from interviews, thoughts from leading industry experts and macro-level trade insights to try to answer this question. One thing is certain: newspapers must respond to this digital age of media turbulence fast.

As unemployment figures rise in the developed world, questions regarding the meaning of “labor” and the intrinsic ”value” of work re-emerge. This paper examines labor practices in virtual game worlds to extend existing theoretical explorations regarding concepts of labor and work in the information systems field. The cases explored in this study ob...

As unemployment figures rise in the developed world, questions regarding the meaning of "labor" and the intrinsic"value" of work re-emerge. This paper examines labor practices in virtual game worlds to extend existing theoretical explorations regarding concepts of labor and work in the information systems field. The cases explored in this study obs...

This paper presents Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab) as an “organisation as prototype” in terms of its innovation; emphasising its permeability to external collaboration and internal structure. We present the accumulation of experience and inspiration found in this organisational prototype as a significant development with as much social impa...

As with all forms of social media, Twitter can be a cost-effective way to promote and grow your business. Use it effectively and you will build valuable relationships with your existing customers, spread the word about your business, identify hot new leads and much more… By contrast with traditional means of marketing, there are no barriers to entr...

Some observers argue that social media has the capacity to empower citizens, creating a new ‘public sphere’ where politicians, public institutions and services can be held to account in ways that were previously impossible. We report on a study exploring whether there is any evidence to support this vision. Following in the tradition of urban commu...

This special issue (SI) explores the use of creative fictional prototyping to motivate and direct research into new high-tech products, environments and lifestyles. Fictional prototyping combines storytelling with science fact to explore a wide variety of possible futures. We define what a prototype is, then outline the design challenges. Commentar...

Futures research has lived up to Wells’ prediction by becoming a legitimate scholarly discipline. In this paper, we explore the role of science fiction in creating prototypes of imagined and better futures evident in these narratives even when they are distinct from the futures they predict. We explore the contributions and warnings of utopian and...

Purpose This paper aims to understand the level of synergy between print and online activity and to assess the influence of print/online synergy on the log of circulation change. Design/methodology/approach In order to meet this aim the authors conducted an empirical study of 100 regional newspapers supplying news media services in the UK. Two hyp...

This editorial explains how creative prototyping could make both a theoretical and methodological contribution, to the long and established tradition of user-driven forecasting and foresight scholarship. We provide summarized reviews of thirteen articles from emerging prototype researchers. This SI contains a very diverse and exciting crop of paper...

This paper explores the manner in which contemporary and popular internet memes have become vehicles for forms of subtle social protest and critical social commentary. A meme is described as an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which...

The structure and form of the Web is defined by specific design elements; its protocols, the scope of acceptable file formats and the capability of clients. These elements are intentionally minimal constraints but nonetheless structure what can be achieved “through” the Web. With the increasingly standardised abilities of Web clients and wider appl...

The developer/user or technology/user dichotomy has long been an important feature in thinking about information systems (IS) development and IS use (for example: Greenbaum and Kyng 1991; Lamb and Kling 2003; He and King 2008). Calls to reframe our understanding of the user of technologies are timely and invite us to rethink some well worn issues....

The aim of this project was to explore the role of local news media in diffusing the intellectual expertise and knowledge from universities and engaging the public in their work. The research begins by studying university engagement practices with news media operations in inner city Manchester. Examining university engagement practices with local c...

This chapter provides exemplars of the influence of digital artifacts upon cultural experiences. We argue that the associations between people and artifacts, and specifically digital artifacts, is an increasingly dense, interwoven, and pivotal aspect of everyday cultural experience. Artifacts themselves resist any stability of meaning by being cont...

This paper challenges traditional explorations of online communities that have relied upon assumptions of trust and social cohesion. In the analysis presented here, conflict becomes more than just dysfunctional communication and provides an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction and identity shape...

Purpose The popularity and persistence of Blogshops raises ethical issues regarding the presentation of the female teenage owners' “self” to others and the relationship they maintain with buyers and other owners. Design/methodology/approach This ongoing observational study of Singaporean Blogshops reveals a layered and interrelated typology of alt...

In this article we build upon existing research and commentary from a variety of disciplinary sources, including information systems, organisational and management studies, and the social sciences that focus upon the meaning, significance and impact of “events” in the information technology, organisational and social context. Our aim is to define h...

The individual sense of gendered identity and location are embedded within information technology (IT) usage (Meyrowitz, 1985). Exploring gender in relation to place and IT assists to reveal the impact that cultural knowledge has upon IT usage. This article illustrates the intertwined complex of issues that associate gender and place with IT by exa...

In this article we build upon existing research and commentary from a variety of disciplinary sources, including information systems, organisational and management studies, and the social sciences that focus upon the meaning, significance and impact of “events” in the information technology, organisational and social context. Our aim is to define h...

This paper examines the activities and economies of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates. YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates is an online role-playing game that draws upon puzzle-orientated gameplay to construct a social world. This paper addresses the important issue of social networking in information systems. It is a theoretical exploration of the deeper issues and impli...

This paper examines the activities and economies of YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates. YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates is an online role-playing game that draws upon puzzle-orientated gameplay to construct a social world. This paper argues that technology (in this case YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates) can offer a social experience that mimics everyday life including its aspect...

This paper outlines an agenda for research that contributes to the development of sustainable virtual world ecosystems. It provides direction for understanding the social aspects of both trust and conflict. Trust is often referred to in research to examine the social interactions observed in virtual communities. It is an important theoretical facto...

This paper theoretically explores the implications of boundary crossing, enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), by workers in organisations. Drawing on the tradition of critical thinking and in particular Marxism, we explore how and why crossing boundaries may be disruptive in ICT enabled working practices. The increasing uti...

In this article we build upon existing research and commentary from a variety of disciplinary sources, including information systems, organisational and management studies, and the social sciences that focus upon the meaning, significance and impact of "events" in the information technology, organisational and social context. Our aim is to define h...

In this chapter, we explore the methodological and epistemological implications of conducting feminist, gender research in the information systems field. These implications revolve around four core themes: that feminist research is situated in the margins; that current gender and IS research is not adequately problematized; that feminist research q...

The reconfiguration of the home-work boundary that at-home telework entails has significant implications for gender issues and the use of ubiquitous information and communications technologies (ICTs). By presenting a Marx-inspired dialectical analysis of the family and home as both 'haven and hell', we develop a critique of proposed advantages for...

This paper critically identifies a series of traits that are representative of contemporary cyberculture(s). From this identification the paper considers the way in which these traits – as they are specifically articulated in the spaces of the World Wide Web – enables the articulation of social solidarity through the continuous synthesis of conflic...

This paper examines a specific online community and the degree to which participants' association is constituted and reinforced through conflict. We sample the existing literature regarding online communities in an historical sense and critique the preponderance among these writings to advocate trust and consensus. Our argument is that much of the...

In this paper we make a contribution to the theoretical and empirical discourses regarding Web-based communities and online social interaction. The significance of myth-making within a web-based community is the primary consideration for this paper. This phenomenon provides the critical framework for deconstructing and understanding the interaction...

In this chapter1 we explore the methodological and epistemological implications of conducting feminist, gender research in the information systems field. These implications revolve around four core themes: (1) that feminist research is situated in the margins; (2) that current gender and IS research is not adequately problematized; (3) that feminis...

Our understanding of the e-society should incorporate the case of at-home teleworking because of its implications for the use of ubiquitous ICTs in the home environment, work relations and gender issues. Rhetoric surrounding the benefits of telework impinge on promises of increased freedom, reduced burden, and 'flexibility' from an employees perspe...

Identity construction in computer-mediated environments as in "real life" environments is influenced by existent social processes. In these virtual environments the computer screen mediates specific experiences of localised physicality; however these computer-mediated experiences do not alter the overall sense of being for the individual. To intera...

In this paper, we explore the methodological and epistemological implications of conducting feminist projects in management information systems (MIS) research. These implications revolve around four core themes: that feminist research is situated in the margins; that current gender and MIS research is not adequately problematized; that feminist res...

Identity construction in computer-mediated environments as in real life environments, is influenced by existent social processes. In these virtual environments the computer screen mediates specific experiences of localised physicality; however these computer mediated experiences do not alter the overall sense of being for the individual. To interac...

This paper discusses the potential implications of a risk society on identities due to alterations in work practices. The promise of ‘flexibility’ via at-home telework entails a renegotiation of the home–work boundary. This brings into play the gendered identities and roles attached to these different spheres of life. After deconstructing promises...

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Exploring the nature of linkages as a means of examining the potential for business collaboration within a Queensland region, this paper uses the existing business linkages as a means of analysing the potential of a region to foster greater collaboration amongst small and medium enterprises. Past research suggests that when firms within individual...

Adopting a non-Habermasian critical realist position, this paper seeks to outline some key elements of a realist ontology, on the one hand, and a radical critical stance on the other. The relationship of critical realism to positivism and interpretivism is described, and the case for methodological pluralism made. The elements of realism described...

This paper contextualizes the research approach followed in an interpretive Information Systems study that explored the development of a Web information system. The paper provides details of the methodological approach followed in the project, the assumptions used, and the research techniques utilized when conducting a specific interpretive study o...

This paper is a reflective discussion on the use of equipment matrices to determine infrastructure requirements in an education context. This position was originally presented within the wider framework of a governmentfunded research project to initiate national policies for implementing IT within primary schools. Equipment matrices were seen by th...

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This paper is a reflective discussion on the use of equipment matrices to determine infrastructure requirements in an education context. This position was originally presented within the wider framework of a government-funded research project to initiate national policies for implementing IT within primary schools. Equipment matrices were seen by t...

Problems of recruitment and progression of students in IT schools contribute to the failure to meet the growing demand for IT personnel. This paper contributes to the discussion of these problems by considering the incoming students' skills and their views of the IT field and by discussing the effect a bridging subject on IT skills might have on st...

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This paper discusses professional women's perceptions of the skills required for working in the information technology (IT) industry with respect to the skills women bring to IT work and how the skills contribute to their career progression. The paper references interviews with ten women IT professionals who were asked to describe their entry into...

This paper explores the strategies employed by ten successful women IT professionals. Tensions and contradictions are identified in this discourse, particularly with regards to the special skills and qualities which women bring to IT work. It is suggested that the ‘feminine’ skills’ that are widely regarded as being useful in the IT industry, may a...

This paper considers the industry's IT/IS skill requirements in relation to the notion of new forms of organisations such as learning organisations and virtual organisations. The challenge facing IT education is to create a learning environment that helps developing skills (eg double loop learning and an ability to handle complex and unstructured p...

This paper is not an exploration of learning organisations as such. It considers the industry’s information technoloy and systems (IT/IS) skill requirements in relation to the notion of organisational learning as double loop learning in order to understand the manifold nature of IT careers. The paper reviews the data from an ongoing empirical study...

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Virtual space provides more challenges to business organizationsthan simply its status as a new spatial phenomena. The conceptualizationof traditional organizational structures is altered within virtualspace. The significance of this observation is compounded whentraditional operational forms of organization continue to maintainfixed or inpenetrata...

Information technology (IT) education and the industry continue to be male dominated and less women are entering computing courses at the university level. Research into gender and IT suggests that this is partly due to the masculine meanings generally ascribed to computing. Earlier research by authors of this paper (Greenhill, v. Hellens, Nielsen...

Despite the masculine meanings generally ascribed to computing, and the general underrepresentation of women in the information technology (IT) education, women from many Asian cultures are well represented. This study poses comparative experiences of Asian and non-Asian women in the apparently hostile `international' computer culture. It explores...

Although the percentage of women entering IT education is declining, Asian women continue to outnumber other ethnic groups in IT education in Australia. This paper presents some of the findings from a study of the cultural factors that influence high school students of Asian extraction to choose IT studies. These findings as well as the results of...

Computer‐mediated communication is a phenomenon of post‐industrial society. As a consequence of the interactivity and persistent textual nature of this form of communication, new spaces of sociality are constructed which can be analysed and interpreted with the epistemologies and methodologies utilised in understanding more conventional places. Thi...

Despite the rapid growth of the Internet during 1994 and 1995 no adequate or consistent method of referencing material from this source has been developed. Failure to address this issue will result in Internet resources not being awarded full recognition within academic discourse. Unless corrected, the significance of this oversight will be exacerb...