The importance of socio‐emotional considerations in online communities, social informatics, and information science

Alongside cognitive and social phenomena, many scholars have examined emotional and affective considerations in information science, but a potential emotional or affective paradigm has not coalesced to the extent of the social or cognitive paradigms. We argue information science research should integrate the social paradigm, as offered by social informatics, with affective and emotional considerations: a socio‐emotional paradigm. A review of existing literature and findings from users' motivations to participate on the Academia section of the Stack Exchange social questioning‐and‐answering site make our case. We uncovered tensions between the intended information‐centric focus of the community and users who believed social, emotional, and affective considerations needed to be foregrounded, speaking to online communities acting as boundary objects, with the “fit” for one user or community not always the same as for another. An integrated socio‐emotional paradigm shows much strength for social informatics and information science research, including uncovering hidden concerns and differences in values, as in our study. Affective and emotional research, often bubbling under in information science, should rise to the surface is not so much a paradigm shift but an integration of social, emotional, and affective considerations into a socio‐emotional paradigm.