Societal Values and Digital Phenomena: Case Analyses of Blockchain Use and Digital Nomadism

Abstract

Digital phenomena today generate puzzling contradictions in how we assess their value. Consider Bitcoin: while someone dismiss it as economically value, resembling a Ponzi scheme, others attribute political value. This stark divergence in value judgments, despite examining identical blockchain phenomena, reveals a fundamental challenge in IS research. Traditional IS research has long approached value of IT through a economic lens, focusing on how IT help reduce costs or increase economic benefits. However, emerging digital phenomena such as blockchain, AI, and digital nomadism consistently generate conflicting value assessments that resist such economic interpretation. Why do value judgments in digital phenomena often conflict? This question drives this thesis, challenging us to reconsider fundamental assumptions about how we conceptualize and judge value of IT in digital contexts. Rather than viewing conflicting assessments as problems to be resolved, this thesis treats them as phenomena worthy of investigation or windows into the deeper assumptions that shape how we understand value itself. To address this challenge, this thesis puts forward the “values in digital phenomena” framework through hermeneutic literature analysis, examining both IS literature and broader philosophical work on value and valuation. This framework is then examined in two contrasting cases: blockchain use (typically studied through technical lenses) and digital nomadism (typically examined through social practice lens). This theoretical sampling strategy helps examine the explanatory power of the framework on value conflicts across different sociotechnical contexts. This thesis contributes to IS theory by reconceptualizing value of IT from a pluralistic perspective, offering practitioners new ways to understand stakeholder conflicts around digital innovations, and providing researchers with analytical tools for investigating values in emerging technologies.