Dr. Kathleen Burnett
…some of the people driving us all hard into the future on the back of new technologies appear to assume that if we all focus hard enough on information, then we will get where we want to go most directly. This central focus inevitably pushes aside all the fuzzy stuff that lies around the edges—context, background, history, common knowledge, social resources. But this stuff around the edges is not as irrelevant as it may seem. --Brown & Duigood, 2000, p. 1.
For seven years from 1997 to 2004, it was my job as an associate dean to drive a school of information "hard into the future on the back of new technologies." Leaving the driver's seat, I was eager to turn my gaze out the window to "all the fuzzy stuff." Since tenure and promotion to associate professor in 1999, but more intensively since 2004, I have been engaged in research to develop theoretical and empirical foundations for understanding the implications of gender and power in the interweaving of the technical and social that shape information access and exchange and at the beginning of the 21st century.
Historically, the social meaning of information has evolved in concert with information technology. "Information technology is the language and toolbox of our modern lives" (Sanders, 2006). It ". . . shapes our perceptions, distributes our pictures of the world to one another, and constructs different forms of control over the cultural stories that shape our sense of who we are and our world" (Burnett, R. & Marshall, 2003). In recent years information technology has become the lynchpin of a global economy. To make sense of the topography of the "fuzzy stuff that lies around the edges" new maps must be developed. To develop these maps, it is necessary to conduct observations from a variety of perspectives using a range of methods. While I am primarily a qualitative researcher and most at home with grounded theory methodology, my research has incorporated both qualitative and quantitative mixed-methods approaches.
Since the beginning of my career I have been engaged in the development of theoretical frameworks to explore and explain the relationships between emerging information technologies and the changing social meaning of information, particularly as manifested in information access and exchange. Since my promotion to associate professor in 1999, this work has taken two directions: the application of my theory of hypertextual design to understanding changes in children's and adult literature, and the extension of this theory to redefining what it means to be literate in the 21st century. This stream of research is discussed in the Theoretical Frameworks section.
Shortly prior to coming to Florida State University in 1997, I began conducting a series of mixed-methods studies to collect empirical evidence of the relationship between the use of emerging information technologies and changes in the social meaning of information. Those studies published since tenure and promotion are discussed in the Empirical Studies of Technology Use section. When relinquishing my administrative duties in 2004 made it possible for me to intensify my research activities, I took the opportunity to extend my gaze beyond the use of emerging technologies to the implications of that use to the social meaning of information. Reviving a long-standing interest in gender studies, I began to look at why women are so poorly represented in both information technology education and the information technology workforce. This work is discussed in the Social Meaning of Information section.
Mentoring of students conducting dissertation research has been proposed as a measure of research impact since doctoral graduates often continue and extend the research philosophy and goals of their doctoral dissertation mentors. In addition to my own work I have served as major professor for 11 completed dissertations, have served on the supervisory committee for an additional 9 completed dissertations, and am currently chairing eight doctoral supervisory committees. These are discussed in the Dissertation Research Supervision section.