Information technology has been used in organisational settings and for organisational purposes such as accounting, for a half century, but IT is now increasingly being used for the purposes of mediating and regulating complex activities in which multiple professional users are involved, such as in factories, hospitals, architectural offices, and so on. The economic importance of such coordination systems is enormous but their design often inadequate. The problem is that our understanding of the coordinative practices for which these systems are developed is deficient, leaving systems developers and software engineers to base their designs on commonsensical requirements analyses. The research reflected in this book addresses these very problems. It is a collection of articles which establish a conceptual foundation for the research area of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Coordinative Practices in the Building Process: An Ethnographic Perspective presents the principles of the practice-oriented research programmes in the CSCW and HCI domains, explaining and examining the ideas and motivations behind basing technology design on ethnography. The focus throughout is on generating ethnographically informed accounts of the building process and discussing the concepts of cooperative work and coordinative practices in order to frame technology development. Lars Rune Christensen provides an invaluable resource for these communities in this book. Illustrated with real examples from the building process, he reports on the cooperative work and coordinative practices found, allowing readers to feel that they know, from the point of view of the people working in the building process, what it is like to coordinate and do this kind of cooperative work.

th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in Helsinki Finland. ECSCW is an international forum for multidisciplinary research covering the technical, empirical, and theoretical aspects of collaboration and computer systems. The 20 papers presented here have been selected via a rigorous reviewing process from 110 submissions. Both the number of submissions and the quality of the selected papers are testimony to the diversity and energy of the CSCW community. We trust that you will find the papers interesting and that they will serve to stimulate further quality work within the community. The technical papers are complemented by a wider set of activities at ECSCW 2003, including tutorials, workshops, demonstrations, videos, posters and a doctoral colloquium. Together these provide rich opportunities for discussion, learning and exploration of the more recent and novel issues in the field. This conference could not have taken place without considerable enthusiasm, support and participation, not to mention the hard work of a number of people. In particular, we would like to thank the following: • The authors, representing over 17 countries and 97 institutions, who submitted a paper. So many submissions of such high quality are the basis of a good conference. • The members of the program committee who so diligently reviewed and discussed papers. Their collective decisions result in a good scientific program and their feedback to authors strengthens the work of the community.

The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy is the definitive single-source reference work on the subject, with state-of-the-art and in-depth scholarly reflection on key issues from leading international experts. It is available both online and in print. A state-of-the-art and in-depth scholarly reflection on the key issues raised by communication, covering the history, systematics, and practical potential of communication theory Articles by leading experts offer an unprecedented level of accuracy and balance Provides comprehensive, clear entries which are both cross-national and cross-disciplinary in nature The Encyclopedia presents a truly international perspective with authors and positions representing not just Europe and North America, but also Latin America and Asia Published both online and in print Part of The Wiley Blackwell-ICA International Encyclopedias of Communication series, published in conjunction with the International Communication Association. Online version available at Wiley Online Library

Provides an analysis of virtual communities, explaining their lifecycle in terms of maturity-based models and workflows.

Schmidt and Bannon (1992) introduced the concept of common information space by contrasting it with technical conceptions of shared information: Cooperative work is not facilitated simply by the provisioning of a shared database, but rather requires the active construction by the participants of a common information space where the meanings of the shared objects are debated and resolved, at least locally and temporarily. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 22) A CIS, then, encompasses not only the information but also the practices by which actors establish its meaning for their collective work. These negotiated understandings of the information are as important as the availability of the information itself: The actors must attempt to jointly construct a common information space which goes beyond their individual personal information spaces. . . . The common information space is negotiated and established by the actors involved. (Schmidt and Bannon, p. 28) This is not to suggest that actors’ understandings of the information are identical; they are simply “common” enough to coordinate the work. People understand how the information is relevant for their own work. Therefore, individuals engaged in different activities will have different perspectives on the same information. The work of maintaining the common information space is the work that it takes to balance and accommodate these different perspectives. A “bug” report in software development is a simple example. Software developers and quality assurance personnel have access to the same bug report information. However, access to information is not sufficient to coordinate their work.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP 2016). The conference is a venue for multidisciplinary research contributing to the design, assessment and analysis of cooperative systems and their integration in organizations, public venues, and everyday life. COOP emerged from the European tradition of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Cognitive Ergonomics. A collection of 22 papers and 4 workshop overviews are presented, reflecting the variety of research activities in the field of the design of cooperative systems with a special emphasis on “Making Together” This collection offers a broad vision of collective working practices and cooperative design, embracing the idea that design requires a deep understanding of collective activities, involving both artefacts and social practices within a context. The result is a rich and articulated debate that widens the design space towards the exploration of a variety of forms of participation and engagement in collaborative system design. Experienced researchers, academics, designers and practitioners who are interested in collaborative design theory and methods would be interested in the state of the art research and case studies this collection provides.