Connecting with Information Sources: How Accounts of Information Seeking Take Discursive Action

Taking a discursive approach to information seeking research can allow researchers to move away from considering information seekers’ accounts as transparent and unproblematic representations their information behaviour or underlying cognitive and affective processes. This paper uses a constructivist discourse analytic approach to study the discursive functions performed by accounts of information seeking in a particular context – the ways that individuals use information-seeking stories to “position” themselves discursively. This paper analyses four modes of information practice (Active seeking, Active scanning, Everyday monitoring, Information seeking by proxy) present in participants’ accounts of connecting with information sources. Although the four modes represent varying levels of active engagement in information seeking, accounts of the four modes fulfilled the same discursive function of demonstrating the individual to be an autonomous actor, someone who is active, connected, attentive to the environment, alert to unexpected possibilities, and receptive to appropriate forms of information. Working from a constructivist discourse analytic approach allows the researcher to attend both to the characteristics of the information-seeking context (in this case, pregnancy) and to the researcher-participant interaction and the functions that accounts of information seeking perform within it. It is then possible to study the ways that accounts of information seeking may themselves take discursive action

Informing Traces: The Social Practices of Collaborative Informing in the Midwifery Clinic

The concept of “traces” is useful for understanding the collaborative practices of informing. Readers of documents leave traces of their use, and institutional talk embeds traces of collaborative work, including work done and elsewhere and at other times. This chapter employs a multifaceted qualitative strategy of analytic bracketing to analyze traces in midwives’ and clients’ discussions of clinical results. Results are used to identify and evaluate trends in relation to the current case or to universal norms. Conflicting forms of evidence may need to be negotiated. Barriers may arise when results or sources are inadequate or unavailable. Midwives and women manage these barriers by flexibly assigning the role of information provider in official and unofficial ways. The analysis of traces provides insight into the hows and whats of collaborative work and reveals it to be a complex set of practices that go well beyond the immediately visible contributions of others

The Seeking of Baby-Feeding Information by Canadian Women Pregnant with Twins

Objective: to analyse baby-feeding information needs and seeking described by Canadian women pregnant with twins. Design, setting, and participants: in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 pregnant women were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts provided the data for discourse analysis of the use of two interpretative repertoires. Measurements and findings: the first interpretative repertoire represented caring for twins as fundamentally distinct from caring for singly-born children and therefore emphasised the commonality of mothers of twins regardless of their background or situation. The second highlighted the uniqueness and individuality of each person. These repertoires intersect with discourses of baby- feeding and good mothering, resulting in a complex discursive interplay of similarity and difference, commonality and individuality, information seeking, baby-feeding and good mothering. Participants used the two interpretative repertoires to a) frame information needs; b) construct complex accounts of the biomedical, experiential, and personalised authority of information sources, c) describe the helpfulness of information sources independent of their authority; and d) describe the barriers encountered in the finding appropriate sources of babyfeeding information antenatally. Implications: understanding and respecting the discursive constructions of pregnancy and mothering can help practitioners understand the complex discursive interplay underlying participants’ baby-feeding decisions and may facilitate more sensitive support for women’s individual needs and understandings

The presentation of complementary and alternative medicine information in Canadian midwifery care

Abstract: This paper uses discourse analysis to consider midwives’ and pregnant women’s discussions of conventional and complementary and alternative medicine interventions for inducing labour. Participants distinguished between “natural” and “medical” methods and used information sources based on both biomedical evidence and women’s experience to justify and challenge authority claims. Résumé : Cet article utilise l’analyse du discours pour examiner les conversations des sagesfemmes et des femmes enceintes au sujet des interventions en médecine traditionnelle, douce et alternative pour assister l’accouchement. Les participantes ont fait la distinction entre les méthodes « naturelles » et « médicales » et ont utilisé des sources d’information basées aussi bien sur les évidences biomédicales que sur l’expérience de femme pour justifier et remettre en question les autorités concernées

Information Provision for Informed Prenatal Decision Making

Abstract: In decision making in maternity care, midwives provide information to support clientcentred decisions. Although midwives are expected to maintain neutrality, a variety of concerns limit nondirectiveness. The impact of these concerns is explored through qualitative analysis of midwife-client interactions. The results provide insight into what counts as “information” in these interactions. Résumé : Lors de la prise de décision dans les soins de maternité, les sages-femmes offrent des informations pour soutenir les décisions de leurs patientes. Bien que l’on suppose que les sages-femmes doivent conserver une certaine neutralité, de nombreuses préoccupations limitent le manque de directives. L’impact de ces préoccupations est exploré à travers une analyse qualitative des interactions entre sages-femmes et patientes. Les résultats présentent un aperçu de ce qui est considéré comme « information » dans ces interactions

Borrowed voices -- conversational storytelling in midwifery healthcare visits.

Midwifery in Ontario, Canada exists at the intersection of mainstream healthcare ideology and an alternative, woman-centred ideology of care. As a result, midwifery interaction is characterized by discursive hybridity. We trace this hybridity in the conversational stories co-narrated by midwives and clients during clinic visits. We show how conversational storytelling performs a complex shifting and blending of rhetorical forms and functions integral to the clinical interaction. Conversational stories conform to the structural requirements of the clinic visit and unfold in different ways and perform different functions at different times. Stories may be told, evaluated, and received as institutionally relevant for both clinical and social purposes. Clinical stories perform relational functions, and stories that appear to be fully social orient to the clinical agenda. Hybridity is accomplished through two forms of linguistic borrowing: the blending of professional-institutional and more casual-conversational modes, and interactional features such as shared narration and recontextualization

Time is of the essence: Social theory of time and its implications for LIS research

Abstract: “Time,” like “information,” is a concept that has received a great deal of attention in some disciplines and is ignored or taken for granted in others. Traditional studies of information seeking have focussed on spatial issues – primarily, locating/ location of sources – to the neglect of temporal issues. This paper proposes that the social constructivist theoretical paradigm recently adopted by LIS researchers demands recognition of social time; that is, not absolute time, but another type of meaning constructed between people through their interactions. Attending to social concepts of time can have important implications for research into organizational and individual information behaviour. Information practices in organizations and work groups within organizations cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the multitude of times that exist within such groups. Studies of workplace information practices focus variously on organizations, project teams, task forces, crews, departments, etc. Each group has a different temporal existence based on its practices. For example, organizations, departments and communities imply longevity as well as duration. We describe a developing study of information practices in a limited-duration work group. Traditional studies of information seeking often consider individuals’ descriptions of their information seeking behaviour as transparent representations of underlying cognitive processes. A constructivist stance permits an analysis of the ways that accounts of information seeking can take discursive action: the ways that such accounts are structured and the ways they may be used to make claims about individuals’ general behaviour or competence, and to prescribe or proscribe certain sets of activities. The concept of “time” may then be used as a discursive resource by individuals in a social interaction. We report findings from a study of the ways that information seekers may use various representations of “time” in justifying certain kinds of information seeking behaviour

Producing storytime: A collectivist analysis of work in a complex communicative space

Storytime programs for young children are ritual events in the everyday life of the public library. This article analyzes data from two such programs to identify and analyze the work carried out by program leaders, their adult and child participants, and other social actors in other settings (e.g., library CEOs) in order to enable the program to happen. The study builds on research on the public library as a physical space and on the library in the life of the user by describing the often invisible literacy, information, and caring work that goes into accomplishing social settings within the physical space of the library. We contend that the work carried out to produce storytime is both discursively bound and value laden and that storytime participants constitute an emerging discourse community whose work coordinates and is simultaneously coordinated by the ongoing creation and maintenance of its discursive boundaries