Social mapping for supporting sensemaking and collaboration: the case of development informatics research in South Africa

Abstract

Development Informatics is a multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary field encompassing various research philosophies, realities and priorities. This diversity complicates connection and collaboration between researchers in the field and that can undermine the growth and impact of Development Informatics research. The objective of this paper is to propose social mapping as a mechanism to support research collaboration through communal sensemaking. Social mapping technology is used to represent the South African Development Informatics research landscape towards identifying behavioural collaboration patterns. The data set includes the associations, collaborations and publication choices of at least 50 South African researchers. Despite the limitations in terms of scope the results demonstrate that social mapping has the potential for presenting research connections visually in a way that supports the sensemaking of the social dynamics within the society. Besides the visual representation of researcher connections to conferences and research areas the research also provides insights into the data capturing challenges for social mapping. The findings provide a point of departure towards understanding the research collaboration patterns and publications patterns that may impact Development Informatics research.