Rhinesmith, Colin2014-11-142016-03-302014-11-142016-03-302014-11-04http://hdl.handle.net/11244/1362077th Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, October 31 - November 5, 2014This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of cloud computing in a human services organization in East St. Louis, Illinois. Previous social informatics studies have focused on the impact of computerization on urban welfare organizations. This research instead uses a “social shaping of technology” perspective to investigate the ways in which broader social, political, and economic forces shape cloud computerization and its consequences within a nonprofit organization that administers government-funded social welfare programs. The findings illustrate how the infrastructural tensions between external stakeholder demands and internal organizational needs significantly influenced a software as a service implementation project. In presenting this infrastructural analysis, I seek to fill a gap in the literature on the social shaping of cloud computing and its consequences in U.S. industrial suburbs, such as East St. Louis, where high rates of poverty exist.Library and Information SciencePresentation