Jutta Haider

Conceptions of “information poverty” in LIS: a discourse analysis

Purpose – To provide an analysis of the notion of “information poverty” in library and information science (LIS) by investigating concepts, interests and strategies leading to its construction and thus to examine its role as a constitutive element of the professional discourse.Design/methodology/approach – Starting from a Foucauldian notion of discourse, “information poverty” is examined as a statement in its relation to other statements in order to highlight assumptions and factors contributing to its construction. The analysis is based on repeated and close reading of 35 English language articles published in LIS journals between 1995 and 2005.Findings – Four especially productive discursive procedures are identified: economic determinism, technological determinism and the “information society”, historicising the “information poor”, and the library professions moral obligation and responsibility.Research limitations/implications – The material selection is linguistically and geographically biased. Most...

The environment on holidays or how a recycling bin informs us on the environment

– This study sets out to explore how people account for their translation, negotiation and shaping of environmentally relevant practices as information practices in their everyday life during the holidays and asks further how these narratives can be seen as accounting for situated information practices. It aims to focus on how summer guests holidaying in southern Sweden talk about how they connect different kinds of common everyday life practices to environmental information., – The investigation was carried out over a period of five months during 2008. It is based on seven semi‐structured interviews with nine owners of summer cottages in a holiday village in southern Sweden, three field visits to the village, one including a guided tour, as well as textual analysis of official documents and a local journal. A qualitative thematic analysis, together with a theoretical reading, brings together the intertwined narratives on environmental and information practices, which emerged in the interviews with close readings of textual documents. The resulting themes were given additional meaning by relating them to observations from field visits., – First, there is no obvious link between peoples theoretical knowledge of environmental issues and their actual practices in everyday life. This is also the case for those aware of the impact individual practices are said to have on the environment and on society at large. Second, certain objects and the practices tied to them seem to have become carriers of environmental information in themselves. They are so routinely connected to environmental issues that people “think” through them, when they account for how they think about the environment in a way that has meaning to them., – Focusing on the situated information practices involved in creating meaning on environmental issues could have implications for how we think about information campaigns and policy making regarding environmental issues and lifestyles., – This paper suggests that a strong focus on the various perceived and constructed roles of information might contribute to conceptualise more robustly the role of objects and practices for conveying and enacting environmental issues and help to counter the de‐coupling of private and institutional responsibilities.

Of the rich and the poor and other curious minds: on open access and “development”

Purpose – The paper seeks to reconsider open access and its relation to issues of “development” by highlighting the ties the open access movement has with the hegemonic discourse of development and to question some of the assumptions about science and scientific communication upon which the open access debates are based. The paper also aims to bring out the conflict arising from the convergence of the hegemonic discourses of science and development with the contemporary discourse of openness.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a critical reading of a range of published work on open access and the so‐called “developing world” as well as of various open access declarations. The argument is supported by insights from post‐development studies.Findings – Open access is presented as an issue of moral concern beyond the narrow scope of scholarly communication. Claims are made based on hegemonic discourses that are positioned as a priori and universal. The construction of open access as an i...

Interrupting practices that want to matter. The making, shaping and reproduction of environmental information online.

Purpose – This article aims to explore construction, production and distribution of environmental information in social media. Specifically, the focus is on peoples accounts in social media of their everyday life practices aimed at leading what are considered environmentally friendly lives. The article seeks to establish how through the reproduction of alignments of certain everyday and domestic practices with environmental destruction and protection situated information on the environment is constructed and made available.Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a qualitative, interpretative analysis of content, materiality and form of blogs and of their enmeshed social media applications, dedicated specifically to aspects of environmentally friendly everyday life. The blogs were selected from an interlinked set of 60 Swedish language environment blogs.Findings – Formal, topical and social arrangements give priority to certain material conditions and practices that then underpin a set of dom...

The Shaping of Environmental Information in Social Media: Affordances and Technologies of Self-control

This article studies environmental information as it circulates in social media, specifically in personal blogs and microblogs. It rests on a thematic analysis of a selection of Swedish language, personal, everyday life environment blogs active during 2011 and 2012 and the social media applications connected to these blogs. Gibsons concept of affordances and Foucaults notion of governmentality are brought together to examine how material and technological affordances of social media and the structures of governmentality work together to engender a type of information on environmentally friendly living that is rooted in the conditions of the Web, together with a view of society which is structured around choice and individual responsibility. The article argues that information is woven into the texture of the social on every level, including everyday life practices, and hence social media, as tools in such practices, contribute to shaping the way in which information on environmentally friendly living is articulated, shaped, and filled with meaning.

Where do we go from here? An opinion on the future of LIS as an academic discipline in the UK

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current situation of academic LIS research, specifically in the UK and to provide some thoughts considering the future of the discipline. According to the opinion of the authors, this situation is characterised by a lack of cohesion, the need for justification of academic research in terms of its immediate applicability to the professional education of practitioners, and a disjuncture between the information profession and information research. The paper attempts to offer introductory thoughts regarding these circumstances.Design/methodology/approach – The current situation is briefly reviewed and commented on from the authors’ viewpoint. Aspects of Pierre Bourdieus study of the university as a hierarchically structured field of forces are considered. Some reference is made to previous literature.Findings – The paper advances the view that the role of academic LIS research, debate and theory formation needs to be strengthened and that this needs to be...

Pairing information with poverty. Traces of development discourse in LIS.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate and critically assess the notions of “information poverty” in LIS by highlighting its connections with development discourse.Design/methodology/approach – The article takes a discourse analysis approach, which starts from Michel Foucaults understanding of discourse. “Information poverty” is posited as a statement and investigated in its relation to other statements. The focus is on discursive procedures that emerge from the repeated connections between statements. The article draws on the interpretative analysis of 35 English language articles published in scholarly and professional LIS journals between 1995 and 2005.Findings – “Information poverty” and the “information poor” are established as being assigned specific positions in the discourse of LIS as the result of overlapping, sometimes conflicting discursive procedures. The concept emerges as a possibility in LIS by anchoring it in the dominant discourse of development. Traces of development d...

Development and the documentation of indigenous knowledge: Good intentions in bad company?

Abstract There appears to be an increasing interest within library and information studies (LIS) in so-called indigenous or traditional knowledge. Discussions on usefulness and applicability of indigenous knowledge in development seem to be motivating electronic documentation and the creation of databases. Often, definitions provided by international organisations are drawn on unquestioningly, while power structures embedded in descriptions provided by such organisations are ignored. This article aims at drawing attention to the ways in which international organisations define and talk about indigenous knowledge in relation to development. This is achieved by critical, close reading of six publications issued between 1998 and 2008 by the following organisations: WIPO, UNESCO, ICSU, UNDP, the World Bank, and IFLA. The critical reflections are also intended to shed light on how documentation practises can be understood as extensions of power. For this the authors draw on Foucauldian notions of power and discourse as well as on post-development and postcolonial perspectives. Relationships and discursive procedures for statements on science, development discourse and intellectual property rights, are shown to be influential in the creation of the concept indigenous knowledge. Relating indigenous knowledge to post-colonial and post-development studies reveals how indigenous knowledge is created and kept marginalized within the discursive structure of development. The analysis concludes by showing how knowledge named indigenous knowledge is trapped and created in a circular flow which legitimises international aid organizations, development discourse and the intellectual property rights system. The article concludes by demanding greater awareness among LIS researchers and practitioners regarding the culturally embedded character of knowledge practices and of the power of classifying and defining.

Dimensions of trust in scholarly communication: Problematizing peer review in the aftermath of John Bohannon's Sting in science

This study investigates online material published in reaction to a Science Magazine report showing the absence of peer‐review and editorial processes in a set of fee‐charging open access journals in biology. Quantitative and qualitative textual analyses are combined to map conceptual relations in these reactions, and to explore how understandings of scholarly communication and publishing relate to specific conceptualizations of science and of the hedging of scientific knowledge. A discussion of the connection of trust and scientific knowledge and of the role of peer review for establishing and communicating this connection provides for the theoretical and topical framing. Special attention is paid to the pervasiveness of digital technologies in formal scholarly communication processes. Three dimensions of trust are traced in the material analyzed: (a) trust through personal experience and informal knowledge, (b) trust through organized, internal control, (c) trust through form. The article concludes by discussing how certain understandings of the conditions for trust in science are challenged by perceptions of possibilities for deceit in digital environments.

Taking the environment online : issue and link networks surrounding personal green living blogs

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the construction and configuration of environmentally friendly living through making visible the link networks that surround personal greener living blogs. The following questions guide the exploration: which types of organisations/actors structure the issue network of green living blogs as it emerges through links? How do these links contribute to carving out thematic areas as particularly influential for the construction of what greener living is seen to mean? Design/methodology/approach – Mixed method, a link and co-link analysis of 46 personal blogs carried out with the IssueCrawler tool, is backed up by a qualitative textual analysis of central personal green living blogs to contextualise the resulting networks. Findings – The resulting network shows an issue space that is divided in two halves: one half where green living is largely an issue of relating outwards (e.g. by broaching consumption) and another half which is inwards oriented (e.g. beauty products, pers...