Information Systems DIGEST Podcast

In this panel discussion, host Casandra Grundstrom engages with 5 researchers part of a project on assessing the Nordic readiness for the upcoming European Health Data Spaces (EHDS) regulation. As part of the Nordic Health Data Spaces (NHDS) project, we unpack the intentions of the upcoming regulation, and what this means for different stakeholders to navigate a complex policy landscape. We reflect on the technical feasibility of achieving the ambitions of the EHDS and under what conditions value can be realized beyond a portable patient. Finally, we discuss how education can act as an antidote for readiness to the EHDS and present the project-developed MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The course is free and open to all to take, and takes the learner through the potential of the EHDS in transforming healthcare, research, and digital health.

References 

About the project funder: https://www.interregaurora.eu/  

MOOC: https://joy.oulu.fi/en/education-search/introduction-european-health-data-space-avoin-yo 

DigiCampus: https://digicampus.fi/login/index.php  

FinData: https://findata.fi/en/  

Researchers

Minna Isomursu - University of Oulu, Finland

Line Linstad - eHealth Research Center, Norway

Prabhat Ram - University of Oulu, Finland

Kassaye Yitbarek Yigzaw - eHealth Research Center, Norway

Lars Öbrand - University of Umeå, Sweden

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by visiting researcher Olivia Benfeldt, Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School. Olivia is based at the Department of Digitalization, where her research focuses on how data is fundamentally reshaping business and society. Her work explores data governance as practice to examine frictions, dependencies, and possibilities in everyday organizational life. Olivia is particularly interested in data governance as a collective action problem, and how sociopolitical issues in situated work enable and constrain what can be done with data—and by whom. She currently leads the newly established Data Studies research theme at CBS and is involved in several projects investigating the making of large-scale governance. Her work has been published in journals such as Information Systems Frontiers and the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, as well as presented at international conferences including ECIS and SCIS.

In this episode, we unironically discuss research as a conversation. Who are we talking to when we write a paper? What does having a community mean? We explore these ideas and more with the theme of data governance as an undercurrent. 

References:

Benfeldt, O., Persson, J. S., & Madsen, S. (2020). Data governance as a collective action problem. Information Systems Frontiers, 22, 299-313.

Benfeldt, O., Schroder, A., Zambach, S., Greve, M., Singh, R., & Gierlich-Joas, M. FROM CONTEXT TO AESTHETIC: A NORDIC PERSPECTIVE ON DATA STUDIES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS. Forthcoming in SCIS, 2025. 

PARMIGGIANI, E., & GRISOT, M. (2020). Data curation as governance practice. Scandinavian Journal of
Information Systems, 31(1). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol32/iss1/1 

Benfeldt, O., Zambach, S., Nyman, S., & Gierlich-Joas, M. (2024). Data Diplomacy as Governance Practice. ECIS.

Links:

https://irisscis.com/ 

Host Casandra Grundstrom is very happy to participate in a crossover episode with the wonderful people from the Sociotechs Podcast  Associate Professor Silvia Masiero and PhD Researcher Tejas Kotha. This is a special episode which focuses on Silvia's brand new book (out 26.10.24) about Unfair ID. Sociotechs host Tejas and myself (the IS DIGEST host) interview Silvia on the 14 year's in the making of her book and the stories she shares to demonstrate the injustice of identity in different case settings including food security systems, biometric borders, and algorithmic social protection. We further explore the power of these stories for researchers and to discuss core tenets of unfairness for identity, justice, and resistance. Our focus then shifts from criticisms of exclusion to what can be done about unfair ID, discussing how it could be fairer through design. 

Quote from the book “This book has been, since the beginning, a hymn to hope: the hope that by understanding unfairness in digital ID, and the paths of its effects on people, a fairer world can be built for the digitally identified.”

References:
Cheesman, M. (2022). Self-sovereignty for refugees? The contested horizons of digital identity. Geopolitics, 27(1), 134-159.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. The MIT Press.

Jonnalagadda, K. (2024, September 21). Life without Aadhaar. Deccan Herald. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/life-without-aadhaar-3200235

Masiero, S. (2018). Explaining trust in large biometric infrastructures: A critical realist case study of India's Aadhaar project. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 84(6), e12053.

Masiero, S. (2015). Redesigning the Indian food security system through e-governance: The case of Kerala. World Development, 67, 126-137.

Masiero, S., & Das, S. (2019). Datafying anti-poverty programmes: Implications for data justice. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 916-933.

Milan, S., & Treré, E. (2019). Big data from the South (s): Beyond data universalism. Television & New Media, 20(4), 319-335.

Milan, S., & Velden, L. V. D. (2016). The alternative epistemologies of data activism. Digital culture & society, 2(2), 57-74.

Weitzberg, K. (2020). Biometrics, race making, and white exceptionalism: The controversy over universal fingerprinting in Kenya. The Journal of African History, 61(1), 23-43.

Links:
Silvia's book on Unfair ID is available now! 

Sociotechs Podcast

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest Professor Lauri Wessel. He holds the chair for Information Management and Digital Transformation at European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) since October 2020 where he serves jointly at the European New School of Digital Studies (ENS) as well as at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics. Lauri is also an adjunct professor (professor II) of Healthcare Management at the Department of Health Sciences of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Ålesund Campus). Lauri is an IS researcher who leverages organization theory in order to understand and design digital transformation.  He thinks that regardless of theory and methods, research always starts with an interest in solving concrete practical problems that arise in organizations and society at large.  His work has been published in core information systems journals such as Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, and European Journal of Information Systems.

Lauri's podcast episode with 'This IS Research' dealt with inevitable failure that we all face; in this episode, we turn to inspiration and how it can be used in our research. In particular, we draw from Lauri's experience with punk music. While seemingly unrelated, we touch on several key points of punk music and research: methodology, attitude, and affecting change. But how can this inspire us? Tune in to find out.

Lauri's recommended punk playlist!

References:
Davidson, E., Wessel, L., Winter, J. S., & Winter, S. (2023). Future directions for scholarship on data governance, digital innovation, and grand challenges. Information and Organization, 33(1), 100454.

Wessel, L., Baiyere, A., Ologeanu-Taddei, R., Cha, J., & Blegind-Jensen, T. (2021). Unpacking the difference between digital transformation and IT-enabled organizational transformation. Journal of the Association for information systems, 22(1), 102-129.

Links:
https://communities.aisnet.org/sigdite/home 

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest University Lecturer Arto Lanamäki from the University of Oulu in Finland. Much of his research is qualitative and phenomenon-driven research, concerning the role of information technologies in social practices. He is currently working in the Research Council of Finland (Suomen Akatemia) funded AI-REG project (2022-2026) investigating the European Act on Artificial Intelligence. While publishing mostly in the field of IS, he champions a certain research eclecticism and a boundary-breaking ethos. His research has been published in the Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS), among others.

In this episode, we first catch-up with Arto's research and new AI legislation, before turning our attention to paradigms in IS.  We consider the historical saturation of positivism in the IS discipline, the leaning into interpretivism before narrowing in on a paradigm gaining attention called 'critical realism'.  What is critical realism? Why is it important for IS? What does Arto think of critical realism? Tune in to find out. Also, colours.

References:
Barley, S. R. (2006). When I Write My Masterpiece: Thoughts on What Makes a Paper Interesting. Academy of Management Journal, 49(1), 16-20.
Brock, S., & Mares, E. (2014). Realism and Anti-realism. Routledge. 
Chen, W., & Hirschheim, R. (2004). A paradigmatic and methodological examination of information systems research from 1991 to 2001. Information Systems Journal, 14, 197-235. 
Giere, R. N. (2010). Scientific Perspectivism. University of Chicago press. 
Lanamäki, A. (2023). Agnostic Affordances: Challenging the Critical Realist Connection. In M. R. Jones, A. S. Mukherjee, D. Thapa, & Y. Zheng (Eds.), After Latour: Globalisation, Inequity and Climate Change. IFIPJWC 2023 (Vol. 696, pp. 265-279). Springer.
Lanamäki, A. (in press). Questioning the Third Way Rhetoric of Critical Realism. The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371492086_Questioning_the_Third_Way_Rhetoric_of_Critical_Realism
Lanamäki, A., Väyrynen, K., Laari-Salmela, S., & Kinnula, M. (2020). Examining relational digital transformation through the unfolding of local practices of the Finnish taxi industry. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 29(3), 101622. 
Mason, R. (2021). Social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. Philosophical Studies, 178(12), 3975-3994. 
Menand, L. (2002). The Metaphysical Club. Flamingo. 
Misak, C. (2013). The American Pragmatists. Oxford University Press. 
Orlikowski, W. J., & Baroudi, J. J. (1991). Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2(1), 1-28.
Siponen, M., & Tsohou, A. (2018). Demystifying the Influential IS Legends of Positivism. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 19(7), 600-617. 
Volkoff, O., & Strong, D. M. (2013). Critical Realism and Affordances: Theorizing IT-Associated Organizational Change Processes. MIS Quarterly, 37(3), 819-834.
Weber, R. (2004). Editor's Comments: The Rhetoric of Positivism versus Interpretivism: A Personal View. MIS Quarterly, 28(1), iii-xii
Link to all references

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest Entrepreneur  and Associate Professor Shellie Boudreau  formerly from Aalborg University, Denmark. (Note: Shellie is no longer working at Aalborg University but at the time of recording she was). Her main research interests started with biomedical engineering for pain and health technology, but through her passion of communication, a desire to move beyond traditional academic roles was found. Shellie is CEO of the research based start-up Aglance Solutions which is a result of her own pain-based research morphed into a software business called Navigate Pain. Shellie has further pushed her entrepreneurial spirit through a communication-focused company called ContentAvenue with a purpose of overcoming the academic and business gap and effectively communicate science.

In this episode, we deviate from some of the expected patterns of this podcast and instead we traverse the boundaries of academia and industry. We reflect on how we can take research-based ideas and transform them into innovations, the trials and tribulations of walking the tightrope of an academic entrepreneur, and learn more about Shellie's experiences doing both all while dealing with some of the taboos of leaving academia. 

Sources:
Scientific Communication: https://contentavenue.com/ 

Blog post: https://blog.contentavenue.com/with-great-power-comes-three-reasons-why-scientists-dread-interviews/

Navigate Pain Software: https://www.aglancesolutions.com/blog/categories/navigate-pain-software

Muracki, J., Kumorek, M., Kisilewicz, A., Pożarowszczyk, B., Larsen, D. B., Kawczyński, A., & Boudreau, S. (2019). Practical use of the navigate pain application for the assessment of the area, location, and frequency of the pain location in young soccer goalkeepers. Journal of Human Kinetics, 69(1), 125-135.

Galve Villa, M., S Palsson, T., Cid Royo, A., R Bjarkam, C., & Boudreau, S. A. (2020). Digital pain mapping and tracking in patients with chronic pain: Longitudinal study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(10), e21475.

NERDs - Network for Research Entrepreneur Developers

Twitter: @contentave

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest Assistant Professor Sam Zaza  from Middle Tennessee State University, USA. Her main research interests lie in diversity, equity, and inclusion; IT career and nature of work, and methodological approaches. She is active in AIS as the SIG Social Inclusion President, SIG Lead President, and Women College CoChair and is the recent winner of the Diversity and Inclusion Advocate of the Year (2023). Sam has published her work in various journals such as Information & Organization, and Communications of the Association for Information Systems, among other proceedings in regional and international conferences.

March is women's month, and we are back for the second time to talk about women in information systems. We unravel what social inclusion is and consider social inclusion from varying perspectives applied to the information systems discipline. We explore and reflect on what are 'our' challenges for social inclusion in conferences and the IS community, ponder why there is limited gender-related research, and ways forward for change. 

References:
Gupta, B., Loiacono, E. T., Dutchak, I. G., & Thatcher, J. B. (2019). A field-based view on gender in the information systems discipline: Preliminary evidence and an agenda for change. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(12), 2. 

Loiacono, E., Iyer, L., Ashong Elliot, M. A., & Cooper, V. A. (2021). Engaging Women in Information Systems: Where Are We Headed?.

 Masiero, Silvia and Aaltonen, Aleksi, "Gender Bias in Information Systems Research: A Literature Review" (2020). AISWN International Research Workshop on Women, IS and Grand Challenges 2020. 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/aiswn2020/2

 Trauth, E. M., & Howcroft, D. (2006). Social inclusion and the information systems field: why now?. In Social Inclusion: Societal and Organizational Implications for Information Systems: IFIP TC8 WG8. 2 International Working Conference, July 12–15, 2006, Limerick, Ireland (pp. 3-12). Springer US.

Trauth, E. (2017). A research agenda for social inclusion in information systems. ACM SIGMIS Database: the Database for Advances in Information Systems, 48(2), 9-20.

Zaza, Sam; Annabi, Hala; and Connolly, Amy J., "All you need to know about publishing Social Inclusion Research in high-quality IS Journals?" (2022). AMCIS 2022 TREOs. 25. https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_amcis2022/25 

Zhou, Shimi; Loiacono, Eleanor; Nerur, Sridhar; Randolph, Adriane B.; Lingo, Elizabeth; Iyer, Lakshmi; and Carter, Michelle, "Authorship, Collaboration, and Influence of Women IS Scholars: Using Social Network Analysis" (2022). AMCIS 2022 Proceedings. 6. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2022/sig_si/sig_si/6

 
Other sources:
AIS Women's Network: https://www.aiswn.org and Twitter @AISWN_AIS
Women's IMPACT IT Research Grant: https://impactit.pages.wm.edu/ 

Check out these other women-oriented podcasts:
https://www.cathymazak.com/podcast/
https://theresearchher.com/ 

Special note: I am disgusted that I need to disclose this. Hate speech will not be tolerated and any offenders will be blocked and reported. 

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest  Professor Torgeir Dingsøyr. Torgeir is professor in software engineering – agile at the Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is further adjunct chief research scientist at the SimulaMet research laboratory. His research has focused on teamwork and learning in software development, as well as development methods for large software projects and programs. He has published in the software engineering, information systems and project management fields.

This episode is the first in a planned ongoing series pushing towards education and educational materials in different formats. The purpose of this episode is to discuss qualitative case studies and the intended audience is aimed towards early-stage researchers such as those working on their PhD, master students, or those reflecting on what it means to do a case study. We will be unravelling some of the underlying theoretical and practical mysteries of qualitative case studies by using Torgeir's explanatory (2023) and exploratory (2018) case studies in the context of software development projects. It is recommended to read both of these articles linked below first to better follow along the examples and implications. The theoretical discussion is guided by Yin's (2011) 6-stage process model: plan, design, prepare, collect, analyze, and share.

References:
Explanatory case study https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10230-6
Dingsøyr, T., Bjørnson, F. O., Schrof, J., & Sporsem, T. (2023). A longitudinal explanatory case study of coordination in a very large development programme: the impact of transitioning from a first-to a second-generation large-scale agile development method. Empirical Software Engineering, 28(1), 1-49.

Exploratory case study https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-017-9524-2
Dingsøyr, T., Moe, N. B., Fægri, T. E., & Seim, E. A. (2018). Exploring software development at the very large-scale: a revelatory case study and research agenda for agile method adaptation. Empirical Software Engineering, 23, 490-520. 

Dingsøyr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V., and Moe, N. B., (2012). A Decade of Agile Methodologies: Towards Explaining Agile Software Development. Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 85, pp. 1213-1221.

Wohlin, C. (2021). Case Study Research in Software Engineering—It is a Case, and it is a Study, but is it a Case Study?. Information and Software Technology, 133, 106514.

Yin, R. K. (2011). Case Study Research and Applications: Design and Methods. 6th Eds. Sage.

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest  Professor Myriam Lewkowicz. Myriam works at Troyes University of Technology where she heads the pluri-disciplinary research group Tech-CICO. She is interested in defining digital technologies to support existing collective practices or to design new collective activities. This interdisciplinary research proposes reflections and approaches for the analysis and the design of new products and services to support cooperative work. The main application domains for this research for the last fifteen years have been healthcare (social support, coordination, telemedicine) and the industry (digital transformation, maintenance). She is a member of the program committees of the main conferences in Cooperative Work, Social Software, and Human-Machine Interaction, chairs the European scientific association EUSSET, and is deputy editor-in-chief of the CSCW journal "The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices".

In this episode we are inspired by the upcoming ECSCW conference hosted by NTNU in Trondheim this year (2023) from June 5th-9th and thus we examine the historical movements that were formative for the conference and the field. Myriam shares with us her wealth of knowledge and lived-experience in CSCW, with a special emphasis on the community and the orientation towards practice and design.  Consider submitting a workshop proposal, journal paper, poster and more to this welcoming community: deadline is February 20th, 2023.

References:
Lewkowicz, M., & Schmidt, K. (2020). Introducing ‘ECSCW Contributions’. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 29(6), 627-628. 

Lewkowicz, M., and Romain L. "The missing “turn to practice” in the digital transformation of industry." Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 28.3 (2019): 655-683

Greif, I. How we started CSCW. Nat Electron 2, 132 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-019-0229-y

More information:
Conference website: https://ecscw.eusset.eu/2023/

CSCW: https://www.eusset.eu/events/summer-school/

Host Casandra Grundstrom is joined by special guest  Associate Professor David Ribes. David joins us from the University of Washington in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and is the deLAB director. He is a sociologist of science and technology and focuses on the development and sustainability of research infrastructures. David's work investigates the long-term changes in objects of research in varying domains including ecology, particle physics, and health (HIV/AIDS).

In this episode, we reflect on (cyber)infrastructures from a sociotechnical perspective. Further considering how what we build for research now impacts the long-term outcomes and what those unintended consequences might be; real-world examples from David's cases are discussed in ecology and health. We then shift to consider the long-now in connection with sustainability and conducting research. 
 
New music made for this podcast from a talented NTNU music student: https://soundcloud.com/demo-little/technological-outbreak

References:

Ribes, D., & Lee, C. P. (2010). Sociotechnical studies of cyberinfrastructure and e-research: Current themes and future trajectories. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 19(3), 231-244.

Ribes, D. and T. A. Finholt (2009). "The Long Now of Infrastructure: Articulating Tensions in Development." Journal for the Association of Information Systems (JAIS): Special issue on eInfrastructures 10(5): 375-398.

Ribes, D. (2017). Notes on the concept of data interoperability: Cases from an ecology of AIDS research infrastructures. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 1514-1526).

Inman, S., & Ribes, D. (2018). Data Streams, Data Seams: Toward a seamful representationof data interoperability.

More information:

http://www.davidribes.com/