Thinking like a bricoleur: New forms of rigor in research on information experience

Information sculpting

“…Bricolage has been identified as a particular form of information use to express a “fluid” method of creating information solutions from what is available to create solutions, often repurposing information for new purposes (Lea French & Williamson, 2016). As such, the bricolage traditions are seen as suitable for studying highly contextual situations and heuristic ways of thinking (Nord, 2022) and studies of mixing and remixing information (Brennen, 2020).…”

Situating complexity: information behaviour in the contact zone

“…Dervin and Nilan's call to identify novel ways of studying users in situational contexts catalysed a proliferation of qualitative studies of users' experiences and perspectives (Bates, 2018;Dervin & Nilan, 1986;Talja and Hartel, 2007). Models and theories acknowledge 'the complexity of context and the actor… embedded in complex, multiple, overlapping, and dynamic contexts' (Courtright, 2007, p. 291) but simultaneously recognise the difficulty of studying multidimensional information experience (Bawden and Robinson, 2015;Dervin, 1997;Nord, 2022;Talja et al, 1999).…”

“…More recently, Polkinghorne and Given have advocated for a full paradigm shift in the field away from mere holistic rhetoric to embrace holism in every step of the research process (Polkinghorne and Given, 2021). Yet framing information behaviour in a contextualised and complex manner has remained an enduring challenge for researchers, particularly regarding where experience occurs (Gibson and Kaplan, 2017;Nord, 2022). There is growing scholarly interest in embodied cognition, the corporeal, and the material and their relation to information behaviour (Cox, 2018;Lloyd, 2010;Lueg, 2015;Olsson et al, 2018;Olsson and Lloyd, 2017), which also informs Polkinghorne and Given's holistic considerations.…”