Feeling documents: toward a phenomenology of information seeking

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present two models of human cognition. The first narrow model concentrates on the mind as an information-processing apparatus, and interactions with information as altering thought structures and filling gaps in knowledge. A second model incorporates elements of unconsciousness, embodiment and affect. The selection of one model over the other, often done tacitly, has consequences for subsequent models of information seeking and use. Design/methodology/approach A close reading of embodied engagements with pornography guided by existential phenomenology. Findings The paper develops a phenomenology of information seeking, centered primarily around the work of Merleau-Ponty, to justify a more expansive concept of cognition. The authors demonstrate the roles of affect and embodiment in document assessment and use, with a prolonged example in the realm of browsing pornography. Originality/value Models of information seeking and use need to account for diverse kinds of human-document interaction, to include documents such as music, film and comics that engage the emotions or are perceived through a broader band of sensory experience to include visual and auditory components. The authors consider how those human-document engagements form virtual communities based on the similarity of their members’ affective and embodied responses, which in turn inform the arrangements, through algorithms, of the relations of documents to each other. Less instrumental forms of information seeking and use – ones that incorporate elements of embodiment and affect – are characterized as esthetic experiences, following the definition of the esthetic provided by Dewey. Ultimately the authors consider, given the ubiquity of information seeking and its rhythm in everyday life, whether we can meaningfully characterize information seeking as a distinct human process.

Information experience as an object of LIS research: a definition based on concept analysis

“…Perspective (P) and noted features (F) of experience In other studies, such as Keilty and Leazer (2018), information consists of communicative products in textual, graphical, audio or visual forms. Researchers of these studies maintain, albeit often implicitly, that for something to be information, it needs to have meanings, and the meanings need to be expressed with signs, symbols, sound and/or other human communication mechanisms.…”

“…This is, in turn, followed by the conception based on the objective view of information and the phenomenological view of experience, which understands information experience as lived experience of interacting with human communication products and environments (e.g. Keilty and Leazer, 2018; Howard and Bussell, 2018).…”

“…It is selected because it forms an indisputable case according to either conception of information experience. Drawing on the phenomenological concept of lived experience and Dewey's concept of aesthetic experience, Keilty and Leazer (2018) present a lived experience of browsing, searching, evaluating and responding to information on a pornography website, which they characterized as being subjective, embodied and affective. They note that the experience is subjective in the sense that it is lived idiosyncratically; it is embodied because the user interacts with the website first and foremost as a sensual being; it is affective because it is saturated with emotions, particularly the sense of pleasure and satisfaction.…”

The expanding circles of information behavior and human–computer interaction

“…We have also seen a move from investigating only library-based, scholarly, and work-related information to “everyday life” information in IB (Savolainen, 1995, 2008), and the recognition that IB is not just involved in life’s problems but also in its “higher things,” such as pleasurable and profound life experiences and projects (Kari and Hartel, 2007). Recent work in this trajectory has explored the emotional and affective aspects of IB (Nahl and Bilal, 2007), the role of the human body in IB (Cox et al, 2017; Keilty and Leazer, 2018), and the first-person experience of becoming informed (Bruce et al, 2014; Gorichanaz, 2020).…”

“…Over the past 30 years or so, some corners of IB have conducted research on the affective dimensions of information seeking (Kuhlthau, 2004 [1993]; Nahl and Bilal, 2007) and information literacy (Bruce, 1997). A growing minority of researchers have become interested in the role of the whole human body in IB since about 2009 (Keilty and Leazer, 2018; Lueg, 2015; Olsson and Lloyd, 2017). These developments notwithstanding, Cibangu (2015) has argued that information science theory has overlooked the bigger picture of what it means to be human and flourish, including elements such as justice, education, shelter, and freedom; while there have been some isolated inquiries into these topics in IB, they remain even today to be linked to IB theories.…”