Mutual shaping of technology and society in videotex newspapers
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Abstract
In this paper I argue that a mutual shaping lens enables a more encompassing and dynamic
account of the joint processes of technological and social change in new media than either the
diffusion of innovations and social shaping of technology perspectives. Drawing from recent
work in science and technology studies, I contend that the shaping and diffusion of media
artifacts are so intimately tied that they should be seen as the two sides of the same innovation
coin. Using examples from the history of videotex newspapers in the United States, I show that
actors simultaneously pursued interdependent technological and social transformations, that this
was an ongoing process in which partial outcomes in the technological domain influenced social
events at a later phase--and vice-versa--and that such process was influenced by historical
developments.