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Miranda Kajtazi. Foto

Miranda Kajtazi

Associate professor

Miranda Kajtazi. Foto

An exploration of opportunities for a theory of information inadequacy

Author

  • Miranda Kajtazi
  • Darek Haftor

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