Pablo J. Boczkowski
This paper argues that a mutual shaping lens enables a more encompassing account
of the joint processes of technological and social change in new media than
the diffusion of innovations and social shaping of technology perspectives.
Drawing from recent work in sociology and history of technology, organization
studies, social informatics, and computer supported cooperative work, this paper
suggests 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,
the analysis shows 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.