GENRE ANALYSIS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 2003 by Firth, David R, Lawrence, Cameron

Looking at the types of communication addressed, only one author (Erickson, 1999; Erickson, 2000) has looked at social rather than work related messages. Recent work using social network analysis (e.g. Firth, 2003; Wasko and Teigland, 2002) has shown how the social aspects of communication can have an impact on work being done in the workplace. We suggest that using genre analysis to examine the social communications taking place between work place actors may provide interesting insights.

Looking at the IT artifacts examined by our authors, we find that whilst the array of different systems studied is diverse, it is also not very current. New types of communication systems, such as Internet Messenger (IM) and Text messaging have yet to be put under the lens of genre analysis. Both of these examples are finding a greater place in the work place, and are influencing the way actors within organizations communicate. Anyone dipping their toe for the first time into the general pool of IM or Text messaging on the Internet will likely be surprised at how little they can understand. A great deal of jargon and iconics5 tends to get used. Genre analysis could be employed to see to what extent such jargon and iconics is used by business users of such technologies, and whether or not there are any unique genres to these contexts. This is important, because Yoshioka, Yates and Orlikowski (2002) have shown that different communities of users can understand the same genre in different ways, and there can be problems in the way shared genre norms are developed. They also showed that these differences lead to difficulties in appropriation of the technology.

We also suggest that our understanding of the complex planning and design processes that lead to the construction of open source artifacts could be enhanced through this type of analysis. Genre analysis is clearly a well placed analytic device that can help us seek insight into these interesting phenomena.

Most research using genre analysis seems to focus on the human behaviors reflected by the usage of the IT artifact, and the managerial and operational practices for facilitating IT artifact usage. We see limited work in the genre analysis field on what impact IT artifacts have upon the humans who interact with them as a consequence of ordinary social technical interaction. It is a logical progression in the research agenda to move from an examination of IT use to a more nuanced study of the organizational impact of use, if any, different genres might have. Given our understanding of the fact that selecting the appropriate genre for a particular type of communication is important, future studies might include, for instance, an assessment of the impact of the introduction of a unique genre within a communicative system, or to what extent work processes are improved by being able to search using genre or from classifying documents by genre.

Genres are organizing structures shaped by the communicative actions of individuals, and they provide an analytical lens to investigate those actions (Orlikowski and Yates, 1994). When it comes to understanding the communicative practices existing within organizations, genre analysis provides a powerful tool for researchers and practitioners alike. Given its successful use to date, and its solid contribution to the identity of the IS discipline, its continued use is strongly encouraged.