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1 – 10 of over 26000Andrew M. Cox, Brian Griffin and Jenna Hartel
The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of the body in information in serious leisure by reviewing existing work in information behaviour that theorises the role of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of the body in information in serious leisure by reviewing existing work in information behaviour that theorises the role of the body, and by drawing selectively on literature from beyond information studies to extend our understanding.
Design/methodology/approach
After finding a lack of attention to the body in most influential works on information behaviour, the paper identifies a number of important authors who do offer theorisations. It then explores what can be learnt by examining studies of embodied information in the hobbies of running, music and the liberal arts, published outside the discipline.
Findings
Auto-ethnographic studies influenced by phenomenology show that embodied information is central to the hobby of running, both through the diverse sensory information the runner uses and through the dissemination of information by the body as a sign. Studies of music drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, similarly suggest that it is a key part of amateur music information behaviour. Even when considering the liberal arts hobby, the core activity, reading, has been shown to be in significant ways embodied. The examples reveal how it is not only in more obviously embodied leisure activities such as sports, in which the body must be considered.
Research limitations/implications
Embodied information refers to how the authors receive information from the senses and the way the body is a sign that can be read by others. To fully understand this, more empirical and theoretical work is needed to reconcile insights from practice theory, phenomenology, embodied cognition and sensory studies.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates how and why the body has been neglected in information behaviour research, reviews current work and identifies perspectives from other disciplines that can begin to fill the gap.
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Keith Munro, Ian Ruthven and Perla Innocenti
This paper investigates the information behaviour of creative DJs, a group previously not considered from the perspective of information studies. The practice of DJing is a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates the information behaviour of creative DJs, a group previously not considered from the perspective of information studies. The practice of DJing is a musically creative process, where a performance can draw on a vast range of music to create a unique listening and dancing experience. The authors study what are the information behaviour processes involved in creative DJing and what roles embodied information play in DJing practice.
Design/methodology/approach
From a set of semi-structured interviews with 12 experienced DJs in Scotland, UK, that were subjected to inductive thematic analysis, the authors present a model of how DJs undergo the process of planning, performing and evaluating a DJ performance.
Findings
From this study, a model of creative DJs’ information behaviour is presented. This three-stage model describes the information behaviours and critical factors that influence DJs’ planning, decision-making and verification during the pre-performance, performance and post-performance stages, with particular emphasis on DJs’ performances as a rich site of embodied information interactions.
Originality/value
This research provides insight into a new activity in information behaviour, particularly in the use of embodied information, and presents a model for the information behaviour of creative DJs. This opens the way for future studies to consider minorities within the activity, the audience as opposed to the performer, as well as other creative activities where physicality and performance are central.
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The purpose of this study was to explore the information behaviors (IBs) of performers and artisan/vendors in American Renaissance faires. This research is exploratory in nature…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to explore the information behaviors (IBs) of performers and artisan/vendors in American Renaissance faires. This research is exploratory in nature and seeks to discover how existing IB theories, including embodied information practices, can explain the information seeking and use of performers and artisan vendors working in American Renaissance faires.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used semi-structured qualitative interviews with three artisan/vendors and 12 performers at Renaissance faires to explore their IBs around the roles at the festivals. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed from an exploratory framework, looking for how existing IB theories might explain the findings.
Findings
Although the participants in this study described information practices that were embodied and corporeal, they shared more experiences around the complex and fraught nature of information sharing within the Renaissance faire community. Information sharing prohibitions were related to power dynamics and the participants' roles as gig or contingent workers.
Originality/value
This was the first study to explore the IBs of Renaissance faire performers and artisan/vendors and as such, was exploratory in nature. The findings point to several areas for additional research.
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Bodies are central to the information experience, but are not often accounted for as a source of information, that is central to the information literacy experience. Based on…
Abstract
Bodies are central to the information experience, but are not often accounted for as a source of information, that is central to the information literacy experience. Based on research with emergency services personnel and with nurses, this chapter explores the role of the body as a locus for understanding and meaning-making. Drawing from a sociocultural perspective, the author suggests that the concept of information experience as a stand-alone conception is meaningless. A solution is to acknowledge the referencing of embodied experience against social conditions and ways of knowing that inform peoples’ experience of practice, as located within the body. Key questions for researchers considering an information experience approach are posed.
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Eric Ofori, Terry Griffin and Elizabeth Yeager
Precision technologies have been available at the farm level for decades. Some technologies have been readily adopted, while the adoption of other technologies has been slower…
Abstract
Purpose
Precision technologies have been available at the farm level for decades. Some technologies have been readily adopted, while the adoption of other technologies has been slower. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing farmers' time-to-adoption decisions as duration between year of commercialization of precision agriculture (PA) technologies and year of adoption, at the farm level.
Design/methodology/approach
Time-to-adoption, which is the difference in years between technologies becoming commercially available and the year of adoption was determined using non-parametric duration analysis, and the impact of specific farm/farmer characteristics on time-to-adoption were estimated using a semi-parametric Cox proportional-hazard (CPH) model, based on a panel dataset of 316 Kansas farms from 2002 to 2018.
Findings
The findings indicate that, time-to-adoption for embodied-knowledge technologies such as automated guidance and section control were statistically shorter than for information-intensive technologies such as yield monitors, precision soil sampling and variable rate fertility. Duration was indirectly (directly) proportional to commercialization date of embodied-knowledge (information-intensive) technology. More so, time-to-adoption statistically differed among technologies within these two broad categories. Time-to-adoption varies across farm location and between both types of technologies. Millennial farmers are more likely to adopt both types of technologies sooner compared to baby boomers. Net farm income, percentage changes in debt-to-asset ratio, corn to total crop acres and machinery investment had no significant impact on the time-to-adoption for both information-intensive and embodied-knowledge technologies. On the other hand, while variations exist, time-to-adoption of PA technologies is mainly driven by location of farm, generation of farmer, number of workers, years of farming experience, total acres cropped and the cost of crop insurance.
Originality/value
This study investigates how the financial position of farms, amongst other important factors might influence time-to-adoption of PA technologies. Results are useful to extension personnel and retailers for planning marketing or farm outreach programs taking into consideration that, time-to-adoption differs across regions and by specific characteristics, key amongst them: generation of farmer, number of workers, years of farming experience, total acres cropped and the cost of crop insurance.
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Aira Huttunen, Noora Hirvonen and Lotta Kähkönen
This study aims to increase the understanding of the early-stage identity-related information needs of transgender people.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to increase the understanding of the early-stage identity-related information needs of transgender people.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on social constructivism, queer theory and information practice research. In accordance with the queer phenomenological approach which emphasises lived experiences, data was collected by interviewing 25 individuals who identified as transgender. The data was analysed with a focus on how early-stage information needs are formed into conscious information needs.
Findings
The formation of early-stage information needs were conceptualised as a chain including a trigger for information seeking, finding the right words and understanding the experience. Especially the bodily changes starting at puberty were strong causes of discomfort causing friction between the subjects' own gendered body and their gender experience, even leading to gender dysphoria. Finding words to describe the experience played an important role in the process of identity formation. In many cases this was difficult because of the lack of accurate and relevant information.
Social implications
Providing information especially of varying transgender experiences is vital for individuals trying to understand and verbalise their gender identity.
Originality/value
This study provides an understanding of the early-stage information needs described by transgender people and the process of building identities through disorientation. This study suggests that early-stage information needs are a valid concept to help understand how embodied experiences and the friction between the lived experience and the social world can lead to information seeking.
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Anna-Maija Multas and Noora Hirvonen
This study examines the information literacy practices of young video bloggers, focusing on the ways in which they construct their cognitive authority through a health-related…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the information literacy practices of young video bloggers, focusing on the ways in which they construct their cognitive authority through a health-related information creation process.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws upon socially oriented information literacy research and nexus analysis as its methodological framework. Data, including YouTube videos, theme interviews and video diaries, were collected with three Finnish video bloggers and qualitatively analysed using nexus analytical concepts to describe the central elements of social action.
Findings
The study shows that video bloggers employ several information practices during the information creation process, including planning, information-seeking, organization, editing and presentation of information. They construct their cognitive authority in relation to their anticipated audience by grounding it on different types of information: experience-based, embodied and scientific. Trustworthiness, emphasized with authenticity and genuineness, and competence, based on experience, expertise and second-hand information, were recognized as key components of credibility in this context.
Originality/value
This study increases the understanding of the complex ways in which young people create information on social media and influence their audiences. The study contributes to information literacy research by offering insights into the under-researched area of information creation. It is among the few studies to examine cognitive authority construction in the information creation process. The notion of authority as constructed through trustworthiness and competence and grounded on different types of information, can be taken into account in practice by information professionals and educators when planning information literacy instruction.
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The purpose of this paper is to present findings on the way in which self-identified sadomasochist apply their information literacy skills, and to analyse those applications in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present findings on the way in which self-identified sadomasochist apply their information literacy skills, and to analyse those applications in the context of existing research on information literacies (IL).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on the author’s two decades of ethnographic work within a national-level sadomasochist community, supplemented by interviews with 30 practitioners and an extensive literature survey.
Findings
Sadomasochists avoid the social stigma associated with their activities by developing highly refined ILs. Central among these is the ability to learn from other practitioners by reading and interpreting their actions as “texts.” They furthermore stockpile potentially useful information for later use. Their ILs not only make sadomasochists more skilled in their practices, but also provide them with safety.
Originality/value
By examining its subject community, the paper develops the ideas of embodied information literacy, currently strongly associated with workplace learning, to the hobby and lifestyle sectors, as it deals with a particularly corporeal set of ILs. This radical example allows scholars to conduct research on the ILs other communities of practice, in which the activities may be less obviously corporeal, but the literacies just as based on embodied interpretation and the reading of others’ activities as texts.
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Annemaree Lloyd and Margaret Somerville
The purpose of this article is to explore the contribution that an information literacy approach to the empirical study of workplace learning can make to how people understand and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to explore the contribution that an information literacy approach to the empirical study of workplace learning can make to how people understand and conceptualise workplace learning.
Design/methodology/approach
Three cohorts of fire‐fighters working in two regional locations in NSW, Australia were interviewed using a semi‐structured interview approach. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed to work with the data; post‐structuralism.
Findings
Study findings indicate that an understanding of information literacy and information literacy practices contributes to workplace learning by highlighting the relationship between different modalities of information, and the relationship between workplace learning and professional identity. Information literacy is not solely confined to developing skills related to accessing information in textual or digital modalities, but requires access to social and physical sources of information.
Originality/value
The information literacy approach contributes to a developing understanding of the role of workplace learning by highlighting the process as a catalyst for learning. This process is underpinned by ways of knowing about the types of situated information sources that are valuable for learning about practice and profession.
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Niloofar Solhjoo, Maja Krtalić and Anne Goulding
This paper introduces more-than-human perspective in information behaviour and information experience studies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understandings of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper introduces more-than-human perspective in information behaviour and information experience studies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understandings of the concept of multispecies families by exploring their significant dimensions related to information phenomena involving multiple contexts, situations, spaces, actors, species, and activities.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on previous research in human information behaviour and human-animal studies, our ideas around information experience of multispecies families are developed conceptually. The paper builds both on previous empirical findings about human information behaviour and the new domain of information experience.
Findings
The paper proposes a holistic approach both to information phenomena in everyday living with companion animals including embodied, affective, cognitive, social, digital, and objectual information that shapes pet care and management practices, and to the context of study, including work, domestic, and leisure aspects of multispecies family.
Originality/value
This study broadens our understanding of information phenomena in multispecies families, and so contributes to the field of information experience. It also provides insights for animal welfare scientists to help them understand the information behaviour of humans who are responsible for keeping and caring for animals.
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