Information Science - Information Behaviour of Groups and Individuals

Articles from this series

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1. Information science - Introduction
2. Information science – Uniqueness and essential questions
3. Information science – Philosophical approaches
4. Information science – Paradigms
5. Information science – Epistemologies
6. Information science – What is information?
7. Information science - Terminology (Knowledge, Document)
8. Information science - Terminology (Collections, Databases, Relevance)
9. Information science – Domain
10. Information science – Organisations of information
11. Information science - Information systems
12. Information science – Informetrics
13. Information science – Application of informetrics
14. Information science – Information behaviour
15. Information science – Theories of information behaviour

Main source

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Introduction to Information Science - DAVID BAWDEN and LYN ROBINSON

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Information behaviour of groups

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The less interesting and at the same time more obvious way how to explore human behaviour is trough studying groups. The idea derives from the Karl Poppers theory of 3rd world explained in “Epistemology” article. Basically every group of “connected people” shares similar “decoding mechanism” of information. Information scientists try to study to which extent the “similar understanding of 3rd world” is affecting the individuals to behave in certain ways (from the point of view of information explained throughout the whole “information behaviour” miniseries). There are three general ways how groups that can be studied are selected.
The first one is through mutual jobs, or domains. People that spend years in domains with people with very similar interests are definitely under its “influence”.
The second is trough same roles. While the first way is rather social one, the second is psychological. Roles can be for example students, patients, citizens and so on. Again, playing a certain role, in any moment, or throughout the whole life, makes people act in similar ways in many situations.
The third one is trough demographic characteristics. That means quite a lot of different characteristics. It can be either age, whether woman, or father is being studied, the rich or the poor, or geographical setting. This is by far the least conclusive way how to study groups, because the studied scale is so enormous that excluded aspects can actually be the ones influencing the individuals.

Information behaviour of individuals

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When information of individuals is studied, typical “behaving pattern” is being searched for. The “behaving pattern” can also be understood as “information style” for better grasp. Those information styles can be plausibly researched only in micro-environments. The only explored micro-environment right now is HCI (explained in article “Information systems”). Ill present the “so far” discovered information styles.

• “I don’t care” – They do not see value in accessibility of information.
• “The lone wolves” – They work alone. They prefer to scan vast scales of information and hope that random important bits of information will be discovered.
• “The insecure seekers” – They always fear that the most important information have been missed.
• “Confident gatherers” – Instead of mundane seeking of information they are creating their own information databases and concepts.
• “Hunters” – Seeking of information is their routine. They aim for the new and relevant information.
• “Information boss” – Controls extensive information environment.
• “Information operator” – Creates environment rich witch information. He uses lots of sources and strategies to achieve that.
• “Information pragmatic” – Casual gatherer of information when information need arises.
• “Information slowpoke” – Rarely searches for information. Relies on “rule of thumb” and connections.
• “Information homeless” – What is information? I don’t need it nor want it…

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