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Dissertation Information for Gerald Benoit

NAME:
- Gerald Benoit

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1998)

ADVISORS:
- Leah Lievrouw

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Virginia A. Walter
- Philip E. Agre
- Gregory H. Leazer

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Information seeking as communicative action

Abstract: This study examines two models of information seeking between individuals and formalized information systems. The individuals are competent social beings who seek meaningful, contextualized information. The "information system" is an efficiency-oriented, regularized set of behaviors providing information services in the form of computerized retrieval applications or human representatives of a professionalized information-providing group. These professional work functions may exercise authority over the information-seeking individual, in what is called here the traditional model, or follow an alternative model to work cooperatively to achieve mutually-acceptable goals.

The proposed new model defines three constructs: relational status, language use, and discursive interaction. These constructs are operationalized as content variables reflecting semantic and pragmatic language, belief, clarification, shared knowledge, and private knowledge and three contextual variables based on the behavior of the speakers: addressing the seeker's goal, neutral utterances, or speaking from an authority role. A content analysis of sixteen encounters between systems and seekers provided the raw data for an empirical study. A discriminant analysis of these data found two clearly defined groups of cases that correspond to high and low quality interactions. The high group is based on the alternative model. It favors interpretive interaction, has qualities of pragmatic language use, internal discursive coherency, and demonstrated clarification of unfamiliar terms, all in the context of the seeker's goal-directed information seeking. The low quality group, founded on the traditional model, reflected language behaviors that separate belief statements from semantic ones and relies predominantly on speakers' private knowledge. This group's discourse was not internally coherent. At times the system representative spoke from the authority of his role (e.g., technician, teacher, police) and blocked attempts to disambiguate language and equalize relationships. The communication in these situations failed entirely or direction of the interaction was taken over by the system participant.

MPACT Scores for Gerald Benoit

A = 1
C = 0
A+C = 1
T = 1
G = 1
W = 1
TD = 1
TA = 0
calculated 2008-07-07 15:45:20

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