Metatheories, orientations, paradigms and frameworks for human information behavior

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INSC 510

• Metatheories, orientations, paradigms and
  frameworks for human information behavior

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Discussion

• Metatheories, orientations, paradigms and
  frameworks?
• Does Information Science have successive,
  defining theoretical models and frameworks?

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• Traditional/ Physical
• User oriented
• Cognitive viewpoint
• Sensemaking
• Social constructionism

Human Information Behavior
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• System oriented paradigm - physical paradigm
  information transfer model, empiricism
• user oriented paradigm
• Cognitive view
• Sensemaking
• Social constructionism

constructivist
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System oriented paradigm

• Objective view of information
• Users seen as mechanistic and passive
• User behavior predicted according to general
  variables - age, income
• Atomistic - focus on users interaction with
  system point of contact only
• focus on external behaviors contact with system
  is indication of need and behavior
• individuality regarded as chaotic
• quantitative

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User oriented paradigm

• subjective information
• constructivist active user
• situationality
• wholistic views of experience
• internal cognitions
• systematic individuality
• qualitative research

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The cognitive view(B.C. Brookes)
Ks
i ks
s
Modified knowledge structure
Knowledge structure
Information

• Any processing of information - whether
  perceptual or symbolic - is mediated by a system
  of categories or concepts, which, for the
  processing device, are a model of its world (De
  Mey)

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The cognitive view (Ingwersen)

• The world model consists of knowledge
  structures. These are determined by the
  individual and social/ collective experiences,
  education and training etc.

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Sensemaking
Questions answered, ideas formed,
resources obtained
Discontinuity Condition
Gap bridged
Situation
Uses (Helps)
Gap faced
Strategies used info values sought
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Sensemaking moment
Situation
Each moment is potentially a sensemaking moment
Circling the experience
Gap
Use (Help)
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Social Constructionism

• The primary human reality is about people in
  conversation
• communication and conversation are used to
  structure and organize social reality
• focus on public and social not private and
  subjective

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Social contructionism

• Emphasizes the negotiation of meaning
• reality construction through discourse
• there is no versionless reality
• rejects monologism and replaces this with
  dialogism
• the most important things take place in
  interaction, in discursive practices between
  people not within the individual cut off from his
  or her social relationships

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Social constructionism

• Assumes that we construct versions of reality
  between ourselves
• Knowledge is something people do together rather
  than an individual possession