Editorial, issue 13.3
Dear readers,
The year 2017 marked twenty years of publishing for this scholarly journal. The premiere issue of Human IT in 1997 represented an examination of information, text, culture, and the human subject, in the digital-technological milieu. It predicted almost perfectly a brand of publishing which has since matured over forty-two issues – including three double issues and thirteen special themed issues. While, admittedly, researchers from Library and information science writing in Swedish were somewhat overrepresented in early TOCs to get the journal going, it was transboundary from the start. Multidisciplinary – our ambition has always been to cultivate a generous interpretation of humanvetenskap, encompassing the humanities, social science, pedagogy, theology, and behavioural sciences as fruitful perspectives for critical and creative discussion of technology. This has also enabled opportunities to partake early in the Nordic establishment of several new research fields, notably game studies and digital humanities. Polylingual – encouraging authors to submit contributions not only in Swedish and English, but also Danish and Norwegian in line with our Nordic profile.
This called for celebration and so in November friends of the journal met at the University of Borås. The programme was set up for a festive-discursive afternoon with invited guest presenters and journal co-workers past and present.
Anna-Malin Karlsson, three-time Human IT author, reviewed how the relationship between language and IT has developed since 1997 – an insightful chronicle with many entertaining examples (and screenshots) from the history of 'Cyberspace'.
Jonas Linderoth, former guest editor, gave a thought-provoking presentation – a critical analysis of the promise of gaming as learning. We were also humbled by his admitting how much he had depended on Human IT articles when game studies was emerging in Nordic research.
Former long-time editor Helena Francke shared her experiences working with the journal.
Björn Brorström, vice-chancellor, talked of the importance for the university to publish scholarly journals.
Thank you all who joined us for making it a great event!
The current issue has been long in the making and we are now happy to finally present the last instalment of volume 13. Suitably, issue 13.3 does represent much of those diverse entry points on technology which Human IT strives to give.
Alexandra Borg and Pelle Snickars reports from a recently finished project, in Bokmediets omvandling – en lägesrapport. It reviews the current development of book media with particular attention to e-books and digital distribution. [Open section, Swedish]
Marcus Persson and Elin Thunman's research deals with boundaries between work and home in teachers' use of social media, discerning three distinct practices: virtual, physical, and communicative. In Boundary Practices and Social Media: The Case of Teachers' Use of Facebook to Communicate with Pupils. [Refereed section, English]
Anne Brus reviews Richard Coyne's Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks (2016), arguing that the interdisciplinary approach of Coyne's account on mood in digital and social media, is both to the book's merit and detriment. In the Digital Mood. [Reviews, English]
Lars Degerstedt and Pelle Snickars discuss current challenges for competitive media intelligence in More Media, More People—On Social & Multimodal Media Intelligence, building on case studies from the CIBAS-project. The authors argue the need for companies to adapt intelligence strategies to deal with competitive data that is both social and can come in more modalities than just text. [Refereed section, English]
Janelle Ward contributes the second review to this issue, reading Moria Weigel's Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (2016). Ward finds that while the book's account of the history and state of mediated dating builds its narrow narrative mostly on white heterosexual USA, it does present a compelling case of the emotional labour of dating where the latest technological trends may offer new tools but without bringing any fundamental change to our longstanding efforts of courtship. Technology's Role in the Consumption of Love. [Reviews, English]
Ahmed Al-Sa'di and Dave Parry present their theoretical framework for user-centred interface design, with particular attention to Arabic language tablet PC interfaces in the educational setting. In Successful User-Centred Design for Tablet PC: A Conceptual Framework. [Refereed, English]
David Gunnarsson Lorentzen concludes the issue with a study of Twitter data from political conversations as represented by specific hashtags, mapping the topics discussed by the portion of users defined as 'political Twitter elite'. Is it all about politics? An analysis of the activities of the Swedish political Twitter elite. [Refereed section, English]
We hope you will enjoy this issue, thank you for reading,
Jonas Söderholm, January 2018
Photo credit: Helen Rosenberg
