Gordon Fletcher

• PhD
• Academic Unit Head at University of Salford

The digital economy wields profound transformative potential. This power is particularly evident in the context of developing countries. Yet, despite the potential there is a notable void in systematic and comprehensive knowledge of this specific domain. This paper offers the means to bridge the gap by conducting a bibliometric analysis of scholarl...

In this chapter we briefly recount the history of the Human Choice and Computers conference series, and of Technical Committee 9, and show that not only has there been a marked focus, over more than four decades, on a critical and sociotechnical approach to understanding the relationship between ICTs and society, but that HCC and TC9 might be regar...

These are indeed exceptional and historic times, a global pandemic and public health emergency sitting side by side with heightened public awareness of the injustices of decades of institutional racism. This article considers the current pandemic and lockdown period through a VUCA lens and offers reflection on how the pandemic revealed the fragilit...

To attract a generation of workers and consumers who have never known a world without Wi‐Fi, smartphones, or social media, organizations increasingly have no choice but to incorporate digital technology into every aspect of their operations and processes. The leaders of Hydro‐X, a privately owned British enterprise, met the challenge of digital tra...

Digital and Social Media Marketing: A Results-Driven Approach is an exciting new industry-led, research-informed and results-driven guide to digital commerce. Its examples draw from SMEs and from Europe to offer a unique perspective for those learning about digital marketing and, having been developed in close collaboration with the Search Engine M...

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...

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...

Maria Kutar, Marie Griffiths and Gordon Fletcher look at how we can secure the increasing problem of multiple digital identities.

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...

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...

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...

A decade ago, Castells argued that most surveillance would have no directly damaging consequences. He proposed that what should be of more concern were the unpredictable consequences of our over-exposed lives, the lack of explicit rules for on-line behaviour and how this then was interpreted by a ‘multitude of little sisters’ who process and store...

Embedded within discourses of the enactment of information and communications technologies (ICTs) at work is often a tightly constrained range of legitimate application areas of study, a rather thin concept of user-developer relations and a context of use that precludes simultaneity, multiplicity and informality. This situation persists despite the...

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...

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...

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...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate information communications technologies (ICT)‐mediated inclusion and exclusion in terms of sexuality through a study of a commercial social networking web site for gay men. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses an approach based on technological inscription and the commodification of differe...

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...

In this study, we develop a theorisation of an internet dating site as a cultural artifact. The site, Gaydar, is targeted at gay men. We argue that contemporary received representations of their sexuality figure heavily in the site's focus by providing a cultural logic for the apparent ad hoc development trajectories of its varied commercial and no...

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...

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 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...

This paper discusses the presentation of fame that can be identified through popular search terms. These terms reveal how the rapidly shifting interest in individual identities of ‘fame’ are cast against a continuous sequence of expected and unexpected events including movie releases, annual holidays, murders and terrorist attacks. The central clai...

This paper is a personal account of my experience of teaching Java programming to undergraduate and postgraduate students. These students enter their respective subjects with no previous Java programming knowledge. However, the undergraduate students have previous experience with Visual Basic programming. In contrast, the postgraduate students are...

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...

Yes Yes

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...

Yes Yes

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...

The rapid growth of the Internet has outstripped conventions for citing material from that source. Distinguishing material as a [computer file] does not provide sufficient information about the platform necessary for reading it. The URLprovides useful information, but augmenting it with other details such as author and date not only provides a more...

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 matri-ces were seen by...