Hani Safadi

I am interested in understanding the role technology plays in organizing work and producing innovations that were traditionally conceived within the boundaries of established firms and businesses. My research lies at the intersection of open-innovation and healthcare technology. In my doctoral dissertation, I examined knowledge creation in one open-source community of an Electronic Medical Record named OSCAR. Contrary to other open-source projects, this software is embedded in a community of doctors rather than a community of programmers. I found that the predefined roles of doctors and programmers do not extend into the online community where both groups participate in producing and shaping the software.

I am involved in other research projects that seek to develop a better understanding of the relationships among members in online communities and social medial especially when these relationships are primarily or even exclusively sustained through online interaction. Examining the emergence of leadership in technical forums, I found that leaders are not just among the most central but also post a large number of positive, concise posts with simple language familiar to other participants. Studying the formation of social movement groups on Twitter, I am focusing on how microblogging affords actors who are not previously institutionally recognized to come together collectively to frame a focal issue at the time of a crisis. The study conceptualizes how grassroots actors' framing in a crisis does not merely diffuse but rather builds upon, reacts to and opposes established actors' framing.