Miranda Kajtazi
Associate professor
An exploration of opportunities for a theory of information inadequacy
Author
Editor
- Kai Kimppa
- Louise Leenen
- Charles Ess
- David Kreps
Summary, in English
Our everyday experiences show that the lack of needed information in various human affairs may give rise to consequences that we would like to avoid – e.g. the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia. However, we still do not have a coherent theoretical body that addresses such experiences of information inadequacy as this changes everything in respect to the current conception of the information society, where technology plays a central role. To this end, we provide an initial exploration of opportunities for such a theory: when needed information is not available in human affairs, for any reason. We start with diagnoses of five existing central theoretical bodies that constitute promising candidates to account for instances of information inadequacy. The results show though that these do not offer a comprehensive account for situations where needed information is missing. Secondly, an empirical investigation was conducted, utilizing grounded theory approach, where fifty cases of information inadequacy were analysed. This revealed a number of patterns of plausible causes of information inadequacies in human affairs, which offer a preliminary foundation for a future theory of information inadequacy. This result suggests that information inadequacies may be understood as various instances of information-lack and information-overflow. These two, in turn, include numerous factors that cause information inadequacies, ranging from political and cultural structures, through human individual capabilities, and ending with procedural set-ups and technological artefacts. We advocate that further research should be conducted to explore various instances of information inadequacy aimed to the formulation of a coherent theory.
Department/s
- Department of Informatics
Publishing year
2018
Language
English
Pages
384-394
Publication/Series
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology
Volume
537
Document type
Conference paper
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Information Systems, Social aspects
Keywords
- Information inadequacy
- Information lack
- Information management
- Information needs
- Information overload
Conference name
13th IFIP TC 9 International Conference on Human Choice and Computers, HCC 2018 Held at the 24th IFIP World Computer Congress, WCC 2018
Conference date
2018-09-19 - 2018-09-21
Conference place
Poznan, Poland
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1868-4238
- ISBN: 9783319996042