The Social Construction of Web Infrastructure: Three Complementary Analyses

The world wide web provides an integrating platform for intra and inter-organizational systems. Understanding how the many actors interested in web infrastructure influence design, development and practice can provide insight as to how organisations can manage and make effective use of web infrastructure. The socio-technical perspective views information systems as being socially constructed by actors interacting with each other and with technology. Understanding these interactions can be facilitated by (among others) three techniques – Technological Frames Analysis, Social Network Analysis, and Actor Network Theory. This paper applies these three forms of analysis to extracts from a case study involving the construction of web infrastructure in an academic department. These three techniques can be used to complement to each other to provide a framework for analysis of web infrastructure construction.