Most simply The Social Study of Information Systems is interested in people developing and using technology and the "culture" of those people.

SSIS studies these phenomena by drawing on and using "lenses" provided by social sciences, including: Philosophy, Sociology, Social Psychology, Organisational Theory, Political Science.

Key Universities

Key Universities involved in SSIS are: the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 (LSE), Lancaster University

Lancaster University

Lancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a leading research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at...

, University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 (MIT), University of Salford

University of Salford

The University of Salford is a campus university based in Salford, Greater Manchester, England with approximately 20,000 registered students. The main campus is about west of Manchester city centre, on the A6, opposite the former home of the physicist, James Prescott Joule and the Working Class...

, Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

, the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, Edinburgh University, Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, and Peking University

Peking University

Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...

.

Key people

High profile people in the field are Chrisanthi Avgerou

Chrisanthi Avgerou

Chrisanthi Avgerou is a Greek-born British scholar in the field of the Social Study of Information Systems, focusing on Information Technology in developing countries...

, Tony Cornford, Edgar Whitley and Shirin Madon (LSE), Wanda Orlikowski

Wanda Orlikowski

Wanda J. Orlikowski is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Information Technologies and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She has served as a visiting Centennial Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is currently a...

 (MIT), Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School . She was born in 1951 and is an American citizen. One of the first tenured women at the Harvard Business School, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University and...

 (Harvard), Lucas Introna

Lucas Introna

Lucas D. Introna is Professor of Organisation, Technology and Ethics at the Lancaster University Management School. He is a scholar within the Social Study of Information Systems field. His research is focused on the phenomenon of technology...

 & Lucy Suchman

Lucy Suchman

Lucy Suchman is a full Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom...

 (Lancaster), Joe Nandhakumar (Warwick), Wendy Currie (Warwick), Geoff Walsham

Geoff Walsham

Geoff Walsham is an English scholar in the Social Study of Information Systems. He has done much to establish the value and legitimacy of interpretive research in the field of Information Systems, particularly through his book Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations...

 (Cambridge), Richard Boland (Case Western), Kalle Lyytinen (Case Western), Claudio Ciborra

Claudio Ciborra

Claudio Ciborra was a professor of Information Systems and PWC Chair in Risk Management in the London School of Economics. Prior to the LSE, he was professor at the Theseus International Management Institute....

 (LSE), Rob Kling

Rob Kling

Rob Kling, PhD was a North American professor of Information Systems and Information science at the School of Library and Information Science and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, Indiana University, USA. He directed the interdisciplinary Center for Social Informatics , at Indiana University...

 (Indiana University), Nancy Pouloudi (Athens University), and Qiu Zeqi (PKU).

Key Publications

• Walsham, G. (1993) Interpreting information systems in organizations, John Wiley, Chichester.
• Zuboff, S. (1988) In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power, Heinemann Professional, Oxford.

External links

• http://ccs.mit.edu/Wanda.html
• http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/informationSystems/research/researchFoci/Default.htm