Open Source Software Field Research: Spanning Social and Practice Networks for Re-Entering the Field
CoRR(2024)
摘要
Sociotechnical research increasingly includes the social sub-networks that
emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the
infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses these
numerous sub-networks as advantageous for researchers. It provides a
methodological synthesis focusing on how researchers can best span adjacent
social sub-networks during engaged field research. Specifically, we describe
practices and artifacts that aid movement from one social subsystem within a
more extensive technical infrastructure to another. To surface the importance
of spanning sub-networks, we incorporate a discussion of social capital and the
role of technical infrastructure in its development for sociotechnical
researchers. We then characterize a five-step process for spanning social
sub-networks during engaged field research: commitment, context mapping, jargon
competence, returning value, and bridging. We then present our experience
studying corporate open source software projects and the role of that
experience in accelerating our work in open source scientific software research
as described through the lens of bridging social capital. Based on our
analysis, we offer recommendations for engaging in fieldwork in adjacent social
sub-networks that share a technical context and discussion of how the
relationship between social and technically acquired social capital is a
missing but critical methodological dimension for research on large-scale
sociotechnical research.
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