The role of community‐based, problem‐centered information intermediaries in local problem solving

Abstract

Problem-Centered Information Intermediaries 2 AbstractLobbying for school reform, cleaning up graffiti, installing traffic calming measures, and enacting noise ordinances are daily problem-based activities performed by organized citizen groups. These civic organizations -nonprofit associations, community groups, and neighborhood block watch programs -have operated within communities as a way for people to affect their community's quality of life. Routinely in the course of problem-solving, these organizations-both formal and informal-seek out, interpret, distill, and re-frame information. But understanding information access and use in a community where a range of communitybased, organized groups play the role of information seeker as well as information provider and facilitator presents a challenge to the researcher. In these settings, information researchers must not only address the context of the community, but also the multiple roles that the communitybased groups play in the local information reality.In this paper we argue that organized local groups are critical to the information landscape of communities precisely because they play important intermediation roles. Based on our field work conducted with community organizations in Hartford, Connecticut, we identified several broad strategies employed by problem-centered information intermediaries. First, they make information relevant for their constituents by distilling, tailoring, vetting, translating and compiling. Second, they use both formal and informal mechanisms to collect, share and refer information. Third, they prepare information for specific uses and disseminate information broadly to the community and locally to their target group. This constructed information role emerges out of the context and needs of the community. Moreover, these problem-centered information intermediaries are seen as trusted and credible knowledge sources among their constituencies. And though these civic intermediaries share characteristics with the broad information intermediary role of information professionals, they are different in their focus, purpose and even attitudinal perspective toward information.

Information behaviors in disadvantaged and dependent circumstances and the role of information intermediaries

“…Previous studies have discussed the importance of meaningful information formats (Duncombe & Heeks, ; Gomez et al, 2012), and the intermediary role in interpreting, distilling, and reframing information (Durrance et al, ). Our findings evidence issues of comprehension, and provide insight into constructive information intermediary behaviors, and in particular, the incremental and recursive nature of information cycles, and the personalized nature of meaningful information formats.…”

“…Durrance, Walker, Souden, and Fisher (), investigating everyday information behaviors in a community setting within a US city zone of multiple deprivations, reports that members of local community groups provide an important intermediary role “critical to the information landscape of communities” (2006, p. 2). In particular, they variously: collect and share information and links within and across groups; “routinely… interpret, distill, and re‐frame information” to make it more relevant and accessible to constituents (2006, p. 2); and prepare information for targeted dissemination and use.…”

Reframing integration

“…Agada (1999) investigated the "information use environments," of residents of an African-American inner-city neighborhood and found that gatekeepers were those individuals within the community who were able to move between cultures and link their communities with resources, and who were perceived as trustworthy and credible sources of information. Durrance et al (2006) examined everyday information behaviors for local community-based citizen's groups in the USA and found that they play an important gatekeeping role because they make information more relevant for their constituents by distilling, tailoring and vetting the information according to the residents' needs. Schilderman (2002) reported on the role that intermediaries have as sources of information for the urban poor in Sri Lanka, Peru and Zimbabwe who prefer gatekeepers from social networks based on kinship, proximity or friendship rather than institutional gatekeepers (government agencies, NGOs and health organizations) who might be better informed but who have been unsuccessful in providing the urban poor with information in personalized formatsand in perceiving the urban poor as partners who are an important source of indigenous knowledge.…”

Information is social: information literacy in context

“…At the same time, nonprofit organizations can be notoriously possessive of their field of work. This has been identified as a barrier to information flow within the sector (Durrance et al , 2006b). This is not always the case, but it requires a delicate approach when navigating community stakeholder networks.…”