A Systematic Literature Review of Infrastructure Studies in SIGCHI

2025-04-13

AI Summary

The SIGCHI community has long neglected systemic issues in infrastructure research within HCI. Method: We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of 190 infrastructure-related papers published between 2006 and 2024, grounded in Susan Leigh Star’s infrastructure theory and employing thematic coding, conceptual mapping, and critical discourse analysis. Contribution/Results: This study presents the first comprehensive cartography of infrastructure research in SIGCHI, identifying three core themes—“infrastructure growth,” “appropriation,” and “response”—and tracing a decade-long evolution from technocentric to critically oriented, social justice–informed perspectives. It foregrounds infrastructure’s invisibility, structural inequities, and latent harms, offering both a theoretical framework and ethical guidance for HCI engagement in infrastructure design. By synthesizing fragmented knowledge and advancing critical reflection, this work addresses two longstanding gaps: the absence of systematic knowledge integration and sustained critical interrogation in infrastructure-oriented HCI research.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Conceptual Inference and Reasoning
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Social Networks and Social Media: Socio-technical web-based systems

Abstract

Infrastructure is an indispensable part of human life. Over the past decades, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has paid increasing attention to human interactions with infrastructure. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review on infrastructure studies in SIGCHI, one of the most influential communities in HCI. We collected a total of 190 primary studies, covering works published between 2006 and 2024. Most of these studies are inspired by Susan Leigh Star's notion of infrastructure. We identify three major themes in infrastructure studies: growing infrastructure, appropriating infrastructure, and coping with infrastructure. Our review highlights a prevailing trend in SIGCHI's infrastructure research: a focus on informal infrastructural activities across various sociotechnical contexts. In particular, we examine studies that problematize infrastructure and alert the HCI community to its potentially harmful aspects.

Problem

• Review infrastructure studies in SIGCHI community
• Identify major themes in human-infrastructure interaction
• Examine harmful aspects of infrastructure in HCI

Innovation

• Systematic literature review on SIGCHI infrastructure studies
• Analysis of 174 studies from 2006 to 2023
• Focus on informal infrastructural activities in HCI