Jürgen Habermas revisited via Tim Cook's Wikipedia biography: A hermeneutic approach to critical Information Systems research

• Published in: Journal of responsible technology 2024-12, Vol.20, p.100090, Article 100090
• Main Authors: Smethurst, Reilly, Young, Amber G., Wigdor, Ariel D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Emancipatory technology; Empirical critical research; Habermas; Hermeneutics; Social inclusion; Wikipedia
• ISSN: 2666-6596; 2666-6596
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jrt.2024.100090

•Neo-humanists and radical structuralists conceive emancipation very differently.•We mitigate confusion about neo-humanists’ emancipation and “rational discourse”.•We identify G. H. Mead as the origin of IS theories about “rational discourse”.•We empirically challenge an IS theory about Wikipedia’s “rational discourse”.•We introduce Habermas’s dramaturgical action concept into IS’s Wikipedia literature. Critical Information Systems (IS) research is sometimes appreciated for the shades of gray it adds to sunny portraits of technology's emancipatory potential. In this article, we revisit a theory about Wikipedia’s putative freedom from the authority of corporate media's editors and authors. We present the curious example of Tim Cook's Wikipedia biography and its history of crowd-sourced editorial decisions, published on Wikipedia's talk pages. We use a hermeneutic method to subject the theory about Wikipedia's “rational discourse” and “emancipatory potential” to a soft, empirical test. When we examined Cook's Wikipedia biography and its editorial decisions, what we found pertained to authoritative discourse – the opposite of “rational discourse” – as well as Jürgen Habermas's concept of dramaturgical action. Our discussion aims to change how critical scholars think about IS's Habermasian theories and emancipatory technology. Our contribution – a critical intervention – is a clear alternative to mainstream IS research's moral prescriptions and mechanistic causes.