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Information worlds


Information Worlds


Routledge Studies in
Library and Information Science

1. Using the Engineering Literature
Edited by Bonnie A. Osif
2. Museum Informatics
People, Information, and Technology
in Museums
Edited by Paul F. Marty and Katherine
B. Jones
3. Managing the Transition from
Print to Electronic Journals and
Resources
A Guide for Library and Information
Professionals
Edited by Maria Collins and Patrick Carr
4. The Challenges to Library

Learning
Solutions for Librarians
Bruce Massis
5. E-Journals Access and
Management
Edited by Wayne Jones
6. Digital Scholarship
Edited by Marta Mestrovic Deyrup
7. Serials Binding
A Simple and Complete Guidebook to
Processes
Irma Nicola
8. Information Worlds
Social Context, Technology, and
Information Behavior in the Age of the
Internet
Paul T. Jaeger and Gary Burnett

Previous titles to appear in
Routledge Studies in Library and
Information Science include:

Using the Mathematics Literature
Edited by Kristine K. Fowler
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
A Sourcebook for Educators,
Students, and Librarians
Edited by Edward A. Fox
Global Librarianship
Edited by Martin A. Kesselman
Using the Financial and
Business Literature
Edited by Thomas Slavens
Using the Biological Literature
A Practical Guide
Edited by Diane Schmidt
Using the Agricultural,
Environmental, and Food Literature
Edited by Barbara S. Hutchinson
Becoming a Digital Library
Edited by Susan J. Barnes
Guide to the Successful Thesis
and Dissertation
A Handbook for Students and Faculty
Edited by James Mauch
Electronic Printing and Publishing
The Document Processing Revolution
Edited by Michael B. Spring


Information Worlds
Social Context, Technology, and Information
Behavior in the Age of the Internet

Paul T. Jaeger and Gary Burnett

New York

London


First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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© 2010 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jaeger, Paul T., 1974–
Information worlds : social context, technology, and information behavior in the age
of the Internet / by Paul T. Jaeger and Gary Burnett.
p. cm.—(Routledge studies in library and information science)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Information society. 2. Internet. I. Burnett, Gary, 1955– II. Title.
HM851.J337 2010
303.48'33—dc22
2009046103
ISBN 0-203-85163-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-99778-X (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-85163-3 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-99778-2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-85163-0 (ebk)


To my mother, Carol, for her boundless support, and to
Mallory and Rosa for keeping me company (and standing on
the keyboard, sprawling on papers, and attacking the mouse)
while I try to do my work.—Paul
To my wife, Kathy and my children, Joshua—and his wife,
Casey—and Jerusha, all of whom put up with me more


than I deserve in more ways than I hope to mention. And,
particularly, to my grandchildren Matthew and Lindsey; it
will be years before you read this, if you ever do, but you still
inspire your YeYe.—Gary



Communication systems are neutral. They have neither conscience
nor morality; only history. They will broadcast truth or falsehood
with equal facility. Man communicating with man poses not a problem of how to say it, but more fundamentally what he is to say.
Edward R. Murrow

You get information from people trying to give you . . . trouble.
Robert Grenier



Contents

About the Authors
Acknowledgements

xi
xiii

Introduction

1

1

Theory, Information, and Society

4

2

Information Worlds

20

3

Information Value

39

4

The Evolution of Information Access and Exchange

57

5

Public Libraries in the Public Sphere

72

6

Information Worlds and Technological Change

86

7

News, Media, and Information Worlds

102

8

Information Worlds and the Political World

121

9

Applications of the Theory of Information Worlds

143

10 The Future of Information Theory

158

Bibliography
Index

165
193



About the Authors

Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D., J.D., (pjaeger@umd.edu) is an Assistant Professor in
the College of Information Studies, the Director of the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government (http://www.cipeg.umd.edu), and
the Associate Director of the Center for Library and Information Innovation (http://www.liicenter.org) at the University of Maryland. His research
focuses on the ways in which law and public policy shape access to information, particularly in terms of access for underserved populations. Specific
areas of interest include information policy, e-government, public libraries
and technology, and, of course, social theory of information.
Dr. Jaeger is the Associate Editor of Library Quarterly. His research has
been funded by the Institute of Museum & Library Services, the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Library
Association, and the Association of Research Libraries. He is the author of
more than eighty journal articles and book chapters, along with six books.
His research has appeared in such journals as Government Information
Quarterly, Library & Information Science Research, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Library Quarterly,
Information Research, Telecommunications Policy, Journal of Information
Technology and Politics, Electronic Journal of Electronic Government,
and Information Technology and Libraries, among others. Other recent
books by Dr. Jaeger include Public Libraries and Internet Service Roles:
Measuring and Maximizing Internet Services with Charles R. McClure
published in 2008 by ALA Editions and Public Libraries and the Internet:
Roles, Perspectives, and Implications with John Carlo Bertot and Charles
R. McClure published in 2010 by Libraries Unlimited.
Gary Burnett, Ph.D., (gburnett@fsu.edu) is an Associate Professor at the
College of Communication and Information of Florida State University,
where he has taught since 1996. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, where he specialized in modern American poetry, and an
M.L.S. from Rutgers University. His research has focused on interpretive
practices and the interaction between social interaction and information
exchange in text-based online communities, using a variety of approaches


xii

About the Authors

and frameworks, including the theory of information worlds and social and
textual hermeneutics.
Dr. Burnett is the author of a book on the American poet H.D., and his
research has appeared in a number of journals, including Library Quarterly, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Library & Information Science Research, First Monday, Library
Trends, Information Research, Journal of the Association of Information
Systems and Journal of Computer Mediated Communication.


Acknowledgements

A work of this nature is very long in the gestation, development, and weaving
processes. Well before the writing begins, the ineluctably lengthy formulation of ideas has been occurring for some time. In this case, the formulation
has been ongoing for seven years. Along the way, many people enriched this
process, whether or not they meant to, and even if they yet realize that they
have. A number of our colleagues, collaborators, and friends have helped
us work through these ideas—either by supporting or by challenging them.
Both approaches helped to strengthen the concepts and arguments of the
theory of information worlds.
Important folks without whom this book would have turned out differently are: Rebecca Adams, Ben Bederson, Michele Besant, Laurie Bonnici, Harry Buerkle, Kathy Burnett, Christian Crumlish, Allison Druin,
Karen Fisher, Ken Fleischmann, Renee Franklin, Crystal Fulton, Jen Golbeck, Michelle Kazmer, Paul Marty, Lesley Langa, Jenny Preece, Mega
M Subramaniam, Reijo Savolainen, Kim Thompson, and the kind folks
at Deadwood and DSD. We also thank the numerous journal editors and
anonymous reviewers who have provided invaluable feedback for our work
over the years. Jen Golbeck deserves a great deal of our appreciation (and a
bunch of bright red flowers) for providing thoughtful feedback on the completed manuscript. Special mention obviously must also go the late Elfreda
Chatman, whose life’s work was obviously essential to this project. Both of
the authors knew her, and one was fortunate enough to have worked with
her (and to still have a collaborative article left unfi nished at the time of her
death sitting on his hard drive).
We are also very grateful to our editor Laura Stearns for listening to
us and deciding to let us write this book, to the anonymous reviewers of
the book proposal who offered many strong suggestions, and to Routledge for publishing it. As long time admirers of the theoretical and other
works that have been published by Routledge through its many years, we
are delighted to have our information theory book appearing through this
storied imprint.
Finally, we would like to express our appreciation of the readers of this
book. Thank you for spending time with our ideas.



Introduction

The theory of information worlds—created to provide a framework by
which to simultaneously examine information behavior at both the immediate and broader social levels—is the result of trying to bridge the canyonesque gaps between the ways information is viewed in terms of small social
units and the ways it is viewed in larger societal and political processes.
Since information and accompanying information technologies underlie
virtually every aspect of life in technologically advanced societies, the failure thus far to make stronger theoretical connections between information
behavior in the various levels of society is utterly perplexing.
Part of the explanation likely results from the difficulty and complexity
of working with the theoretical dimensions of information, particularly
social aspects such as information behavior. Regardless of the reasons,
there can be no quivering about the importance of information theory. It’s
not that we are lacking good people working on these issues; the problem
is that there are not enough people working on these issues. The slender
amount of work in this area has very serious consequences for the ability to
research and understand the true roles that information plays in personal,
social, and political arenas. As scholars of information issues and information professionals, it behooves us to work toward understanding the totality of the complex and interrelated roles of information as it moves between
social units, affecting social interactions at the smallest and largest levels.
This book argues that the theory of information worlds can serve as a
theoretical driver both in library and information science—the authors’
native discipline—and across fields, aiming to enrich and expand our
conceptions and understanding of the multi-layered role of information
in society. It has been written to have implications in a variety of domains
related to information use and provision, including information behavior in context, library services, information seeking, communication,
information technology, and policy. As part of this intention, the ideas
presented herein can serve as a framework for advances not only in theoretical work in library and information science and other fields but also
for empirical investigations of the social dimensions of information and
information use.


2

Information Worlds

While this book may most naturally be considered a library and information science text, the ideas have applications for researchers in the many
fields that deal with information as a foundational element, including communication, computer science, education, human-computer interaction,
media studies, public policy, and political science, among others. This work
has liberally incorporated research from these fields, which has hopefully
both strengthened the arguments and increased the utility of the ideas it
presents. One of the key goals of this book is to encourage discourse and
collaboration across fields in tackling the most complicated problems of
information behavior in society.
To encourage such dialogue, the book has been written from a perspective that is not tied to a particular society. While many of its examples are
drawn from the United States, where both of the authors live and work,
the book uses cross-cultural examples and issues pulled from nations and
events around the world. The issues discussed are of relevance to all societies facing the challenge of understanding the social aspects of information
flows and behavior in the electronic environment.
The issues presented are also, to varying extents, of an inherently political nature. While some scholars resist dealing with current political events
in an effort to avoid seeming partisan, such an approach would be contrary
to the purpose of an endeavor such as this one. The social groups in power
and the ways in which they use their power have a significant impact on
the role of information in a society. Decades of partisanship and intense
polarization in the United States now allow any argument that is perceived
by a political faction as negatively portraying them to be disingenuously
attacked as partisan even if it is simply detailing recent events. The discussions of political issues and the role of information in political processes
are not intended to be an endorsement of one party or another. We live in a
political world, as Bob Dylan has noted, and the political issues are simply
a part of the story that must be told.
The book has been written to reach those with a number of interests,
across fields and countries. Key themes include (1) the need for better theoretical understandings of information behavior in society; (2) the increasing
importance of social information behavior as a central research problem in
a growing range of fields; (3) the need to bridge a broad number of streams
of theory and research about information in society; and (4) the links of
theory to important information contexts such as online communities,
libraries, media, public policy, and the political process.
We hope that some of our readers will be encouraged to join the discourse devoted to developing and refi ning social information theory. There
are far too few studies and explorations of theory related to information
behavior, particularly those linking information behavior to social and
political contexts. And joining the discourse on information theory should
not seem like an unachievable goal for any scholar interested in issues of
information. One of the authors (Jaeger) was initially surprised to fi nd


Introduction 3
himself working on theoretical concepts, having come to work on theory
building in response to the general lack of consideration given to information in the theories of political science and public policy. The other author
(Burnett) has made information theory development a key part of his career
and even collaborated with one of the theorists whose work is foundational
to this text.
The ideas in this book are the result of seven years of collaboration
between the authors, being slowly formulated across a series of journal
articles and conference presentations (Burnett & Jaeger, 2005, 2008; Burnett, Jaeger, & Thompson, 2008; Jaeger & Burnett, 2003, 2005). Resulting
from initial explorations of the intersections of concepts of small worlds
and information behavior related to public policy, the line of thinking
evolved into trying to explore the linkages between individual, small group,
community, and society-wide information behavior driven by social forces
large and small.
At some point, it became clear that theory development was a key part
of what was occurring in the work, though the naming of the theory took
much longer than the admission that theory development was afoot. The
fi rst complete articulation of all of the concepts and components of the theory can be found in Burnett and Jaeger’s 2008 paper “Small Worlds, Lifeworlds, and Information: The Ramifications of the Information Behaviors
of Social Groups in Public Policy and the Public Sphere.” The only structural element missing from that paper is the titular designation of theory
of information worlds. While this book provides a considerably detailed
expansion and elaboration of the theory, that article provides the fi rst complete articulation of theory. Based on the author order of that paper, it also
means that the theory itself would most properly be referred to as Burnett
and Jaeger’s theory of information worlds.
Ultimately, the core mission of this book is the presentation of the theory
of information worlds and its potential applications for research, teaching,
and practice related to information in society. The authors of this book, not
surprisingly, feel that the ideas herein have a goodly amount of potential to
advance thinking about information in society.
Paul T. Jaeger and Gary Burnett
June 2009


1

Theory, Information, and Society

Theoretical frameworks for understanding information within a social context are frustratingly rare. Even though information is central to any developed or developing nation—in fact, the loss of technologies to transmit
information would be as catastrophic as the loss of technologies to transmit electricity or water at this point—theory addressing the social roles
and impacts of information is unfortunately hard to come by. However,
information is the true driver of interpersonal interactions, civic engagement, business operations, political discourse, and every other physical and
virtual interaction in an age defi ned by the omnipresence of information
and communication technologies (ICTs). Since the fi rst conceptualizations
of democracy, information access and exchange have been seen as its most
essential foundations. And if Foucault (1979) is correct that reason cannot
act as a tool of oppression, then information not only feeds democratic
discourse, it also fuels the reason that limits oppression. Theoretical frameworks, to truly capture the depth and breadth of the roles of information in
society, need to capture all of these aspects of information.
The difficulty of capturing the wide range of social roles of information,
however, does not alone explain the paucity of theory of the social contexts
of information. It has been aptly noted that “social theory is challenged
in the information age” (Fuchs, 2008, p. ix). Information is hard to capture as a concept; it changes forms and transmission methods and permeates society in uncountable ways. The vast and unblinking developments
of ICTs mean that the channels of information evolve at an amazing pace.
While ICTs can both create chaos and “partly help to reconstruct an order”
(Gitelman, 2006, p. 155), the relentless pace of changes in ICTs may now
resist the reconstruction of order. Ironically, historical predictions about
the future of technology usually revolved around vaporware—technologies
that are always on the way, but never quite materialize (Duguid, 1996).
In contrast, the evolution of technology now outpaces the imaginations
of many of the people who study the future of technology. For example,
in 2002, Lawrence Lessig, in a forecast that clearly turned out to be less
than accurate, predicted that “AOL Time Warner and Microsoft—[would]
defi ne the next five years of the Internet’s life” (p. 267).


Theory, Information, and Society

5

With policies related to information emanating from local governments,
state and provincial governments, national governments, and supranational
and non-governmental organizations, the information policy environment
is more complex and complicated than at any previous point in history
(McClure & Jaeger, 2008a; Relyea, 2008). As information and ICTs have
mushroomed in importance in interpersonal, fi nancial, educational, professional, and governmental transactions and interactions with the rise of
the World Wide Web, many new information policies have emerged. The
legal landscape “has become fi lled with laws and regulations dealing with
information and communication,” as more than “600 bills dealing with the
Internet alone were on the table during the 107th Congress” in the United
States (Braman, 2004, p. 153). Information policies both address a societal
issue regarding information and attempt to balance the interests of different stakeholder groups impacted by an issue (Thompson, McClure, & Jaeger, 2003). New ICTs often compel governments to alter policies to fit the
new technical environment, but the policy activity related to information
is not always meant to promote growth and adoption of new technologies
related to information. The profusion of policy around the globe has closely
paralleled the enormous changes in ICTs over the past fifty years.
New ICTs (e.g., the printing press, telegraph, radio, television, railroad,
and telephone) have long influenced the political processes and the functioning of governments (Bimber, 2003). Their rapid development creates
questions for the longest traditions; for nearly a millennium, law in the
West has been conceived of as a constantly growing and evolving body of
concepts that change to meet the social and technological changes over
time (Berman, 1983, 2003). Yet law simply cannot be conceived, debated,
and passed at a pace to keep up with current levels of technological change
(Braman, 2006; Grimes, Jaeger, & Fleischmann, 2008; Jaeger, Lin, &
Grimes, 2008; Jaeger, Lin, Grimes, & Simmons, 2009).
Part of this problem is that the tidal wave of social, political, and technological changes resulting from the revolution of the Internet and other
ICTs “is understood primarily as a technical one” (Boyle, 1996, p. ix).
The focus on the technical elements—by designers, scholars, lawmakers,
and citizens—often obscures the information issues. These assumptions are
evidenced by the disjunction between expectations for and the actual use
of technologies. The social, commercial, and policy expectations of technological innovations are usually misplaced, with new technologies driving change in unexpected ways (Brynin, Anderson, & Raban, 2007). The
disjunctions likely have a significant relation to the information dimensions
of the ICTs.
These disjunctions are further born out in the fact that the mere presence of a new ICT does not necessarily change quality of life measures in
many users. Statistically, the uptake and usage of ICTs makes little difference in the quality of life for users, particularly in terms of direct impacts
on everyday activities (Anderson, 2007). “Despite the large number of


6

Information Worlds

policy references to the positive effects of ICTs on people’s lives, few of
these claims are supported by empirical research” (Heres & Thomas, 2007,
p. 176). Studies such as these focus on the ICTs, not the specific types of
information they are used to access. And, yet, there is no reason to assume
that access to new ICTs necessarily leads to greater information access and
usage related to important issues.
ICTs have created the means for creating and sharing information at
previously unthinkable levels, resulting in information overload if one tries
to conceive of the amount of information now available. One of the most
common reactions to information overload is to simply ignore the amount
of information available, which seems to be a widespread reaction among
both members of the public and scholars (Goulding, 2001; Wilson, 1996).
Studies in sociology and psychology indicate that individuals now experience culture as a series of fragments of information, even though people
are more likely to recall information correctly and efficiently if it fits within
their established cultural frameworks (DiMaggio, 1997; Martin, 1992).
Problems of overload do not even touch on the problems of quality of
information or the problems of polarization. A longstanding, perhaps overstated, and yet still largely unaddressed concern about online information
is the inaccuracy of much of that information and the ways to help educate
citizens about assessing the quality of information they encounter. Group
polarization, in contrast, describes the situation where people only seek out
information sources coming from people whom they perceive as like them
and that validate and reinforce their already held beliefs and opinions, an
activity that the Internet can make easier (Jaeger, 2005). To put it bluntly,
“a simple correlation between the Internet environment and the expansion of global civil society can no longer be taken for granted” (Deibert
& Rohozinski, 2008, p. 146). Nor can the reverse—that the Internet is a
harbinger of the collapse of civil society—be assumed. As is argued elsewhere in this book, the Internet is perhaps most accurately seen as a kind of
“both/and” setting for information, simultaneously offering the potential
for new avenues of information access and social participation and bringing a risk of further polarization and misdirection. All of these strands are
woven together into an extremely complex and daunting tapestry against
which scholars must try to examine the roles of information in society.
The greatest barrier to the development of theoretical frameworks for
information in society, though, may be in the ways that academic disciplines have conceived of the study of information. As people begin to experience rapid social transformations on a day-to-day basis, social sciences
have a difficult time keeping pace as basic definitions and assumptions
change quickly (Beck, 2002). At a deeper level, however, information as
a theoretical concept does not necessarily receive the attention it deserves.
While information is vital to and underlies every academic discipline, it is
usually left to library and information science (LIS) schools to truly focus
on it. This is highly problematic for two reasons. First, the foundations of


Theory, Information, and Society

7

LIS are squarely in professional education, making many of the faculty in
LIS reluctant to engage in theoretical research. As a result, though there are
some notable expectations among its researchers, LIS is relatively lacking in
native theory (which is discussed in detail in Chapter 10).
The second problem is grounded in the fact that many other fields tend
to ignore the links between their theoretical work and issues related to
information, resulting in the centrality of information to their studies being
insufficiently recognized, as in much of the work drawing upon Shannon
and Weaver’s (1964) theory of communication, which largely treats information as a simple and unambiguous signal passing through the conduit of
communication systems. When information is studied in other fields, far
too often it is conflated with ICTs, as if the issues of content and method of
transmission were interchangeable. For example, many major works about
information and the political process limit their focus to ICTs (e.g., Barber,
1994; Dahl, 1989; Davis, 1998; Davis & Owen, 1998; Etzioni, 1993; Wilhelm, 2000). Yet, one rare exception to this trend that focuses on information and the political process makes no connections to, or even mentions
the existence of, research from LIS (Bimber, 2003).
These problems are also part of a long-recognized issue that different
disciplines of social science do not communicate well, often leading to terminological and methodological confusion (Bain, 1943). In spite of these
challenges—both old and new—social science must develop meaningful
frameworks for studying and understanding the social contexts of information. As was noted three decades ago in a paper about LIS’ struggles with
theory, “there is nothing worth noticing until you have a theory . . . One
must start with a guess, or theory, then collect data in the light of the guess
to see what it reveals” (Swanson, 1980, p. 78). Without such frameworks,
social science will be pulled further and further from the actual experiences
of the members of society. In a life henged round by information and ICTs,
the accurate study of society can only be achieved when the roles of information and ICTs are central to scholarship and to professional practice that
is built on the fi ndings of scholarship.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE THEORY OF INFORMATION WORLDS
While the remainder of this chapter and Chapter 2 will work to lay out the
components of the theory of information worlds and the origins of these
components, the basic structure is presented here as a roadmap. The goal
of the theory of information worlds is to enhance our understanding of the
role of information in society by providing a means by which to analyze
and understand the myriad interactions between information, information
behavior, and the many different social contexts within which they exist.
The theory asserts that information behavior is simultaneously shaped
by immediate influences, such as friends, family, co-workers, and trusted


8

Information Worlds

information sources of the small worlds in which individuals live, as well
as larger social influences, including public sphere institutions, media, technology, and politics. The framework of this theory can be used to examine
the contexts of information at the micro (small worlds), meso (intermediate), and macro (the lifeworld) levels of society. These levels, though separate, are intimately interrelated.
Though the theory of information worlds draws upon work from a wide
range of disciplines and ties together elements of many social theories,
the largest contributors to the foundation of the theory are the theoretical
works of Jürgen Habermas and Elfreda Chatman. Habermas was interested in the largest social structures, while Chatman was most interested
in the smallest social units. In contrast, the theory of information worlds
explores information behavior in terms of all of the intertwined levels of
society—the small worlds of everyday life, the mediating social institutions,
the concerns of an entire society, and the political and economic forces that
shape society—which are constantly shaping, interacting, and reshaping
one another.
To examine these levels and structures in society, the theory of information worlds focuses on five social elements that are part of every level of
society:
• Social norms, a world’s shared sense of the appropriateness of social
appearances and observable behaviors
• Social types, the roles that defi ne actors and how they are perceived
within a world
• Information value, a world’s shared sense of a scale of the importance
of information
• Information behavior, the full range of behaviors and activities related
to information available to members of a world
• Boundaries, the places at which information worlds come into contact with each other and across which communication and information exchange can—but may or may not—take place
These elements are interrelated and constantly interact with and influence
each other.
At the micro level, each small world is a social group with its own social
norms, social types, acceptable forms of information behavior, and shared
perceptions of information value. Within a given small world, members
develop normative ways in which information is accessed, understood, and
exchanged both within the small world and with others outside that world.
Individuals typically exist in many small worlds—such as friends, family,
co-workers, and people with shared hobbies—and individuals will generally conform to the norms and expectations of each small world when they
interact with other members of that world. Each world has many places
where its members might interact with members of other small worlds, and


Theory, Information, and Society

9

these points of contact serve as the boundaries between different worlds.
The number of small worlds is by no means static, as contact between small
worlds and other inputs from social structures can lead to the creation of
new small worlds and the disappearance of existing ones.
Information moves through the boundaries between worlds via people
who cross between the different worlds to which they belong and through
interactions between members of multiple small worlds in physical and
virtual social spaces where members of different worlds encounter each
other. Exposure to the perspectives of other worlds occurs through physical
public sphere institutions, such as public libraries or schools, and through
new technological avenues of communication and exchange, such as social
networks on the Internet. As information moves through the boundaries
between worlds, the social norms of each world shape the ways in which
that information is treated, understood, and used, creating different roles
for the information within each world.
As a larger collective, these small worlds constitute the lifeworld of information—the full ensemble of communication and information exchange in
a society. The various perspectives of the small worlds, as they come into
contact with one another, will influence the overall place of information
within the broader lifeworld. The perspectives of the small worlds, however, are not the only influence on the place of information in the lifeworld.
Other influences, originating in the small but powerful worlds of the media,
the marketplace, or the government, can either promote the movement of
information between small worlds or constrain such movement, constricting the socially acceptable perceptions of information. Certain public sphere
institutions—such as libraries and schools—exist specifically to ensure that
information moves between the small worlds and that members of each
small world are exposed to the perspectives of many other worlds.
Many of the influences on small worlds and the lifeworld are inherently
neutral, capable of advancing goals of either increasing or decreasing information access and exchange. Through time, many different types of ICTs
have both acted as vehicles by which information worlds have connected
and interacted in new ways and as tools used by powerful information
worlds to constrain or limit the flow of information through and across
worlds. Currently, the Internet and online social networks may be the most
powerful examples of this dual role of ICTs. Small worlds are shaped by all
of these larger worlds and forces, but also, in turn, exert their own influence on them.
Building upon all of these foundations, the theory of information worlds
is designed to account for all of the elements at work in shaping the role
that information plays within a society. The entire number of small worlds
and the lifeworld of a society are an information world in the most expansive sense. However, many smaller and intermediate information worlds
also exist in a society as groups of small worlds that are bound together
in some familial, community, social, professional, educational, cultural,


10

Information Worlds

political, geographical, technological, or other means create other units
with an interrelated set of approaches to information.
Though by necessity much more complex than approaches to studying
information at the micro, the meso, or the macro level, the theory of information worlds offers a much richer and nuanced understanding of the ways
in which information is perceived and moves though society. There is no
intention to undermine the great benefit and value of studying the levels
individually, but the large-scale perspective has not previously been sufficiently explored in social theory of information. The theory of information
worlds, thus, provides the researcher another approach and related conceptual tools, which can be used to create a thorough and realistic picture of
information across society.

INFORMATION WORLDS: TOWARD A CROSSDISCIPLINARY THEORY OF INFORMATION
One of the most promising ways to develop the necessary theoretical
frameworks for information is to draw simultaneously from both LIS and
other traditions. The authors of this book have been working together for
years to build a theory that combines the best elements of LIS for understanding the social impacts of information and of other social sciences for
understanding the concurrent impacts of society upon roles and expectations for information (e.g., Burnett & Jaeger, 2008; Burnett, Jaeger, &
Thompson, 2008; Jaeger & Burnett, 2003, 2005). Drawing on the concepts from two theoretical precursors (philosopher Jürgen Habermas and
information theorist Elfreda Chatman), the theory detailed in this book
represents the melding of these concepts into a single theoretical model
which has been designated the theory of information worlds. The theories
of these scholars examine the ways in which information is embedded in
the social worlds of people, but they do so from two very different perspectives: Chatman focuses almost solely on the place of information in
very specific localized communities, while Habermas examines information strictly in terms of the sum total of information and communication
resources of a society as a whole. However, Chatman largely ignores both
the broader “lifeworld” within which her “small worlds” exist and situations in which multiple small worlds come into contact (or confl ict) with
one another, while Habermas pays little if any attention to the ways in
which the broad lifeworld might interact with or be realized in localized
contexts and specific communities.
The foundational element of Habermas’ work is the concept of the public
sphere, defined as “the sphere of private people come together as a public.”
Integral to the concept of the public sphere is what he called the lifeworld, a
broadly defi ned collective environment of information and communication
that links members of an otherwise disparate society together. Habermas


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