Megan Finn
Biographic Data
| ID | 3650632 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan Finn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan |
| FAMILY NAME | Finn |
| SIGNATURE | FINN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Washington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8177-7430 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Platformization of research data infrastructure
New federal research policies support data-driven science by requiring data management planning and data preservation for open access to scientific data and research products. This article shows a “platform effect” in how scientists plan for data preservation. By examining 976 data management plans for projects funded between 2011 and 2021 by the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) in five research areas, we document a shift in plann…
Epistemologies of missing data
During COVID-19, countless dashboards served as the central media for people to learn critical information about the pandemic. Varied actors, including news organizations, government agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations, created and maintained these dashboards, through the onerous labor of collecting, categorizing, and circulating COVID data. This study uncovers different forms of labor and data practices—the work of “COVID d…
Making events
Anticipatory infrastructures assemble sensors that are ready to detect, networks primed to share data, scientists prepared to confirm events, and news organizations poised to tell stories. This article explains how public time is articulated through sensor-mediated communications by examining two anticipatory infrastructures. Each infrastructure uses similar earthquake data to detect, report on, and convene material publics around earthquakes in …
Epistemologies of Missing Data
During COVID-19, countless dashboards have served as central media where people learn critical information about the pandemic. Varied actors, including news organizations, government agencies, universities, and NGOs created and maintained these dashboards, conducting the onerous labor of collecting, categorizing, and taking care of COVID data. This study uncovers different forms of data practices and labor behind the building of these dashboards,…
Ethics governance development
The 2012 Menlo Report was an effort in which a group of computer scientists, US government funders, and lawyers produced ethics guidelines for research in information and communications technology (ICT). Here we study Menlo as a case of what we call ethics governance in the making , finding that this process examines past controversies and enrols existing networks to connect the everyday practice of ethics with ethics as a form of governance. To …
From closed world discourse to digital utopianism
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) began in 1981 as a group of computer scientists concerned about nuclear destruction. Early CPSR members analysed military planning documents and levelled technical critiques at how computers were to be used in battle, highlighting the limits of computing technologies. Although early CPSR arguments were primarily technical, as responsible professionals their practices were based on a collecti…
Anticipatory news infrastructures
To understand news rhythms, scholars have primarily studied how the rituals and routines of news organizations align with the practices and expectations of audiences. The rhythms of today’s networked press, though, are set not only by journalists and consumers but also by largely invisible digital infrastructures: software, data, and technologies from outside newsrooms that are increasingly intertwined with journalistic work. Here, we argue that …
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
Information determinism
We identify and examine the assumption of information determinism that is commonplace in policy arenas: that mere access to the “right information” will precipitate desired actions. Our analysis focuses on implications of information determinism in three cases: California disaster response plans in the 1980s, an Indian development project in the 1990s, and an education project directed at the Global South in the 2000s. Our analyses shows that pla…
Imagining the Internet
This is the ninth time a special issue of Information, Communication & Society has featured some of the most exciting scholarship emerging from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). The p
Seeing with Paper
Government documents such as welfare applications or accounting records are often considered mundane artifacts that signify shared practice and routine. In this paper we examine cases where these "everyday documents" are sites of creation and contestation of the dominant information order. We argue that the circulation of everyday government documents opens up the possibility for a population to gaze back and "see" the state. In three cases, we s…
The limits of crisis data
Information Infrastructure and Descriptions of the 1857 Fort Tejon Earthquake
In 1857 Californians experienced the largest earthquake in the state's history. Few people lived near the earthquake's epicenter, so the earthquake was small in terms of damage and loss of life, but it still was felt from San Diego to San Francisco. After the earthquake, Californians wanted to understand what had happened elsewhere. They circulated narratives about the earthquake by boat and horseback in letters and newspapers. Californians made …
The limits of peer production
In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer production. In this view, digital technologies and social production processes are driving a dramatic democratization of culture and society. Moreover, leading scholars now suggest that these new, hyper-mediated modes of living and working are specifically challenging the hierarchical structures and concentrated power of bureaucracies. This paper firs…
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
An examination of young people's everyday new media practices—including video-game playing, text-messaging, digital media production, and social media use. Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intri…
The limits of crisis data
The limits of peer production
In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer production. In this view, digital technologies and social production processes are driving a dramatic democratization of culture and society. Moreover, leading scholars now suggest that these new, hyper-mediated modes of living and working are specifically challenging the hierarchical structures and concentrated power of bureaucracies. This paper firs…
Anticipatory news infrastructures
To understand news rhythms, scholars have primarily studied how the rituals and routines of news organizations align with the practices and expectations of audiences. The rhythms of today’s networked press, though, are set not only by journalists and consumers but also by largely invisible digital infrastructures: software, data, and technologies from outside newsrooms that are increasingly intertwined with journalistic work. Here, we argue that …
Information determinism
We identify and examine the assumption of information determinism that is commonplace in policy arenas: that mere access to the “right information” will precipitate desired actions. Our analysis focuses on implications of information determinism in three cases: California disaster response plans in the 1980s, an Indian development project in the 1990s, and an education project directed at the Global South in the 2000s. Our analyses shows that pla…
Ethics governance development
The 2012 Menlo Report was an effort in which a group of computer scientists, US government funders, and lawyers produced ethics guidelines for research in information and communications technology (ICT). Here we study Menlo as a case of what we call ethics governance in the making , finding that this process examines past controversies and enrols existing networks to connect the everyday practice of ethics with ethics as a form of governance. To …
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
An examination of young people's everyday new media practices—including video-game playing, text-messaging, digital media production, and social media use. Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networking sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intri…
The limits of peer production
In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer production. In this view, digital technologies and social production processes are driving a dramatic democratization of culture and society. Moreover, leading scholars now suggest that these new, hyper-mediated modes of living and working are specifically challenging the hierarchical structures and concentrated power of bureaucracies. This paper firs…
Information Infrastructure and Descriptions of the 1857 Fort Tejon Earthquake
In 1857 Californians experienced the largest earthquake in the state's history. Few people lived near the earthquake's epicenter, so the earthquake was small in terms of damage and loss of life, but it still was felt from San Diego to San Francisco. After the earthquake, Californians wanted to understand what had happened elsewhere. They circulated narratives about the earthquake by boat and horseback in letters and newspapers. Californians made …
Seeing with Paper
Government documents such as welfare applications or accounting records are often considered mundane artifacts that signify shared practice and routine. In this paper we examine cases where these "everyday documents" are sites of creation and contestation of the dominant information order. We argue that the circulation of everyday government documents opens up the possibility for a population to gaze back and "see" the state. In three cases, we s…
The limits of crisis data
Imagining the Internet
This is the ninth time a special issue of Information, Communication & Society has featured some of the most exciting scholarship emerging from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). The p
Information determinism
We identify and examine the assumption of information determinism that is commonplace in policy arenas: that mere access to the “right information” will precipitate desired actions. Our analysis focuses on implications of information determinism in three cases: California disaster response plans in the 1980s, an Indian development project in the 1990s, and an education project directed at the Global South in the 2000s. Our analyses shows that pla…
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
From closed world discourse to digital utopianism
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) began in 1981 as a group of computer scientists concerned about nuclear destruction. Early CPSR members analysed military planning documents and levelled technical critiques at how computers were to be used in battle, highlighting the limits of computing technologies. Although early CPSR arguments were primarily technical, as responsible professionals their practices were based on a collecti…
Anticipatory news infrastructures
To understand news rhythms, scholars have primarily studied how the rituals and routines of news organizations align with the practices and expectations of audiences. The rhythms of today’s networked press, though, are set not only by journalists and consumers but also by largely invisible digital infrastructures: software, data, and technologies from outside newsrooms that are increasingly intertwined with journalistic work. Here, we argue that …
Epistemologies of Missing Data
During COVID-19, countless dashboards have served as central media where people learn critical information about the pandemic. Varied actors, including news organizations, government agencies, universities, and NGOs created and maintained these dashboards, conducting the onerous labor of collecting, categorizing, and taking care of COVID data. This study uncovers different forms of data practices and labor behind the building of these dashboards,…
Ethics governance development
The 2012 Menlo Report was an effort in which a group of computer scientists, US government funders, and lawyers produced ethics guidelines for research in information and communications technology (ICT). Here we study Menlo as a case of what we call ethics governance in the making , finding that this process examines past controversies and enrols existing networks to connect the everyday practice of ethics with ethics as a form of governance. To …
Epistemologies of missing data
During COVID-19, countless dashboards served as the central media for people to learn critical information about the pandemic. Varied actors, including news organizations, government agencies, universities, and nongovernmental organizations, created and maintained these dashboards, through the onerous labor of collecting, categorizing, and circulating COVID data. This study uncovers different forms of labor and data practices—the work of “COVID d…
Making events
Anticipatory infrastructures assemble sensors that are ready to detect, networks primed to share data, scientists prepared to confirm events, and news organizations poised to tell stories. This article explains how public time is articulated through sensor-mediated communications by examining two anticipatory infrastructures. Each infrastructure uses similar earthquake data to detect, report on, and convene material publics around earthquakes in …
Platformization of research data infrastructure
New federal research policies support data-driven science by requiring data management planning and data preservation for open access to scientific data and research products. This article shows a “platform effect” in how scientists plan for data preservation. By examining 976 data management plans for projects funded between 2011 and 2021 by the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) in five research areas, we document a shift in plann…
Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Public relations (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Economics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Data science (3 works) · Engineering (3 works)