Information & Culture is an academic journal printed three times a year by the University of Texas Press. It publishes original, high-quality, peer reviewed articles examining the social and cultural influences and impact of information and its associated technologies, broadly construed, on all areas of human endeavor. In keeping with the spirit of information studies, we seek papers emphasizing a human-centered focus that address the role of and reciprocal relationship of information and culture, regardless of time and place.

The journal welcomes submissions from an array of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches, including but not limited to historical, sociological, psychological, political and educational research that address the interaction of information and culture.

To learn more about our submission standards or submit an article for publication in Information & Culture, visit our submission requirements page.

 

New Issue: Volume 54 Number 3 (November 2019)

Collecting as Routine Human Behavior: Personal Identity and Control in the Material and Digital World  

by Andrew Dillon

p. 255-280

Andrew Dillon is the V. M. Daniel Regents Professor of Information Science and former dean at the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches and conducts research on human-centered design and the emerging information world.

A Tale of Two Networks: The Bell Telephone System and the Meaning of "Information," 1947–1968  

by Emily Goodmann

p. 281-310

Emily Goodmann is an assistant professor of communication at Clarke University. Her research focuses on the history of the telephone directory, network data, and information during the twentieth century. She holds a PhD in media, technology, and society from Northwestern University.

"Hemisphere Training": Exporting the Psychological Self at the Inter-American Popular Information Program  

by Rob Aitken

p. 311-341

Rob Aitken is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His research interests lie at the intersection of international political economy, cultural studies, and governmentality. His most recent book is Fringe Finance: Crossing and Contesting the Borders of Global Finance.

The Literature of American Library History, 2016–2017  

by Edward A. Goedeken

p. 342-380

Edward A. Goedeken is professor of library science and collections coordinator at the Iowa State University Library. Over the past twenty years he has maintained an ongoing bibliography of library history scholarship and every two years crafts a review essay for Information & Culture on the most recent writings in this discipline.

Available book reviews for the upcoming issue (Spring 2020)

Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, by Sarah T. Roberts, by Seth Perlow
Reviewed by Natalia Kovalyova
"An eye-opening look at the invisible workers who protect us from seeing humanity’s worst on today’s commercial internet. Sarah T. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry. Based on interviews with workers from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, at boutique firms and at major social media companies, she contextualizes this hidden industry and examines the emotional toll it takes on its workers. This revealing investigation of the people “behind the screen” offers insights into not only the reality of our commercial internet but the future of globalized labor in the digital age." (Yale University Press)

Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots and the Politics of Technological Futures, by Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora
Reviewed by Andrea Flores
"In Surrogate Humanity Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora trace the ways in which robots, artificial intelligence, and other technologies serve as surrogates for human workers within a labor system entrenched in racial capitalism and patriarchy. Analyzing myriad technologies, from sex robots and military drones to sharing-economy platforms, Atanasoski and Vora show how liberal structures of antiblackness, settler colonialism, and patriarchy are fundamental to human---machine interactions, as well as the very definition of the human. While these new technologies and engineering projects promise a revolutionary new future, they replicate and reinforce racialized and gendered ideas about devalued work, exploitation, dispossession, and capitalist accumulation. Yet, even as engineers design robots to be more perfect versions of the human—more rational killers, more efficient workers, and tireless companions—the potential exists to develop alternative modes of engineering and technological development in ways that refuse the racial and colonial logics that maintain social hierarchies and inequality." (Duke University Press)

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