Exploring digital technology use in socially and technologically complex contexts: the case of Discord
Creators: name: Almomani, Ghaith
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2024
Subjects: digital technologies
technology use
technology affordances
institutionaL logics
context complexity
affordance propensity

description: Technology use is a central phenomenon in information systems literature and it has long been investigated by employing a wide range of theoretical lenses. Such research on technology use has shown the importance of the context in explaining technology use. However, in recent years, the advent of a new generation of technologies — digital technologies —has increased the complexity of the context in which technology use occurs. This complexity has been argued to alter the patterns of technology use. As a result, a number of information systems researchers have argued that new theories are required to adequately account for the use of such new forms of digital technologies. This thesis explores the use of digital technology in complex contexts. The characteristics of digital technologies, such as openness and generativity, have augmented the complexity of the context in which technology use occurs, justifying the focus on examining the role of contextual complexity in understanding technology use. This thesis considers two aspects of such complexity: social and technological. Social complexity arises from the multiplicity of users involved in the use of a particular technology driven by diverse goals, values, norms and expectations. Technological complexity arises from the multiplicity of technologies that users encounter to attain a particular goal. Thus, this thesis comprises two research questions: RQ 1: How does social complexity arising from the multiplicity of social actors shape users’ patterns of technology use? RQ2: How does technological complexity arising from the multiplicity of technologies shape the use of different technologies to achieve users’ goals? To answer these research questions, the thesis employs an interpretive case study research design involving a communication and social media platform called Discord. The research design is split into two distinct but related empirical studies: the first study addressing the first research question relies on 20 interviews with different categories of Discord users; the second study relies on 21 interviews with a select category of Discord users – Discord bot developers – to address the second research question. The first empirical study integrates the technology affordances lens to examine technology use with the institutional logics perspective to examine social complexity. The findings from the first empirical study suggest that the configurations of multiple institutional logics, rather than the presence (or absence) of individual logics, are key explanatory factors for understanding how complexity in social contexts shapes the users’ patterns of technology use. The second empirical study utilises the technology affordances lens to examine the different affordances provided by multiple technologies. The findings from the second empirical study indicate that users evaluate the affordances of multiple technologies based on three propensity dimensions (relative effectiveness, normativity and recognition), which explains how users leverage multiple technologies substitutionally or complementarily. The findings from this study point to three contextual factors that influence the affordance propensity dimensions: relevant social groups; the capabilities of the platform; and task characteristics. The thesis contributes to existing literature by integrating the findings of the two empirical studies to develop a framework that offers a deeper understanding of technology use by considering the complexity of social and technological contexts. This framework contributes to existing technology use literature by explaining the relationship between logics configurations and technology affordances. The thesis also contributes to the affordance lens literature by introducing the affordance propensity concept, which is useful for explaining the patterns of multiple technologies use.