Information Science and Its Paradigms

Articles from this series

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1. Information science - Introduction
2. Information science – Uniqueness and essential questions
3. Information science – Philosophical approaches

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Introduction to Information Science - DAVID BAWDEN and LYN ROBINSON

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Paradigms

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Paradigm is a set of opinions and theories about a specific subject of any given science field. Whoever has read through the previous articles can imagine that Information science already has vast number of paradigms and the number will probably only be growing over time. The origination of new paradigm doesn’t mean, that one of the old ones has to die. The bigger amount of studied subjects, the bigger need for new paradigms that would concentrate on those subjects. The new born paradigms can slightly overlap the existing ones, or the existing ones can undergo some kind of “Soft fork”, but rarely an existing paradigm ceases to exist. In this article I will concentrate on 3 main paradigms of Information science – systemic paradigm, cognitive paradigm and social-cognitive paradigm.

Systemic paradigm

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Systemic paradigm is strictly connected to “scientific” or “experimental” approach to evaluation of information systems. It also is strongly connected to the philosophical approach “realism” that has been discussed in the previous article. The core premise is that information systems can be objectively examined, isolated from “the real world” (users and their information needs). Cutting system that is meant for users from the users and evaluating is of course useful at first, but sooner or later the cons of such a policy appear. This has naturally led to the next information science paradigm – the cognitive paradigm.

Cognitive paradigm

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As the name suggests, this paradigm takes totally opposite approach. Its aim is to study the “information users”, how they think, what do they know and which information they need and how does it affect their information behaviour (which information they seek). System created through this paradigm are usually much more interactive, or in other words, user friendly. Yet its side effect yet again emerged. Strictly individualistic cognitive paradigm ignores all the social aspects and social interactions. Ignored is for example alikeness of information usage of the same social groups (divaricated for example as per education). And so the need for new paradigm arose yet again.

Social-cognitive paradigm

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Unlike cognitive paradigm the social-cognitive one presumes the interaction in between individual worlds and the social ones. Since the born of this paradigm, Information science became one of the social studies and not only psychological (cognitive paradigm could imply that) and technical, yet individuals are not ignored, nor something like “collective thinking” is proposed. It studies communities that are connected through mutual type of knowledge that is being communicated in between them and the style in which the information is communicated. The approach is yet again realism.

Birger Hjørland - “The aim is the finding of the core for Information science using factors, which are external with regards to individualistic-subjective perception of the users…in contradiction to the cognitive paradigm”

Those ideas were already in some kind of hidden existence even before, but were “spoken aloud” with the creation of this paradigm.

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