Open AccessInformation in action: A situated view
Author(s) -
Ekbia Hamid
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2009.1450460233
Subject(s) - situated , epistemology , perspective (graphical) , action (physics) , polity , key (lock) , sociology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , political science , politics , law , physics , computer security , quantum mechanics
The role of information in daily activities is a key question for information science. Various theories and approaches have been developed to conceptualize the objects and events that inform people as they go about the conduct of daily life. This paper introduces the notion of ‘regimes of information’ to account for the different shapes and meanings that information takes in various situations. Building on Buckland (1991)'s account, and adopting the situated perspective of Garfinkel (2008), the paper applies Boltanski and Thévenot (2006)'s polity model to define and develop the notion of regimes of information. I argue that rather than ‘using’ information as a given, people enact it variously depending on the kind of situation in which they find themselves.