Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research

Stephanie Freeman, M.A., Doctoral Student

Email: stephanie.freeman@helsinki.fi
Tel.: +358 191 44170
Mobile: +358 40 522 4889

Postal address:
Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research
P.O. Box 23
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

Current Activities

How are new forms of Internet-mediated peer-production (such as is Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Wikipedia) changing the relation between developer and user, author and publisher, expert and lay person? What motivates people to contribute? To whom is participation open? Finding answers to the question of the possibilities and problems of participating and acting in one's computer- mediated world, is at the heart of my dissertation research.

The problem of motivation (and participation) is also theoretically interesting and challenging. Individual-psychological theories of motivation are problematic because motivation is seen as happening “inside the head of an individual” isolated from social and cultural reality. However, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Cultural Psychology offer promising tools for studying both volunteers' individual motivation and the collective motive of their work. By examining the relationship between the individual and the collective, I wish to contribute to the development of CHAT.

My PhD thesis will comprise of four articles. Articles1 & 2 are based on data collected from the hybrid firm- Free/ Libre Open source community project OpenOffice.org, which develops a complete set of Free/Open Source Software Office end-user applications.

1) ‘The Social and Material Dynamics of Motivation: Contributions in Open source Language Technology Development(forthcoming' examines OpenOffice.org contributors’ motivation as dynamically and historically developing.

2) ‘The emerging role of the user in end-user FLOSS’ (in progress).

3) ‘The struggle of choosing between Open Source and proprietary software in the Finnish public sector’ is based on data collected from four public sector organizations: The Finnish Meteorological Institute; The Justice Department, The Ministry of Finance and Turku town (in progress).

4) This article will deal with the practices of article-approval in the Finnish Wikipedia (about to begin data collection).

Short Biography

I was born in Savonlinna 21.2 1973 to a Finnish-English bilingual family.I spent my childhood and early adulthood in Jyväskylä.

After graduating from Helsinki University Department of Education (with Adult Education as my major and Psychology, Speech Communication and Management as my minor subjects), I started as a doctoral student in Professor Reijo Miettinen's research group 'Innovation and Organization of Research Work' in 2003. I also belong to The Finnish Post-Graduate School in Science and Technology Studies (Tieteen ja Teknologian valtakunnallinen tohtorikoulu}.