Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
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.