INFORMATION-CHANNEL PREFERENCES AND INFORMATION-OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURES

Laura Robinson

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Library Science and Information Literacy Information Retrieval and Search Behavior Social and Cultural Dynamics

Abstract

Providing an empirical base to flesh out the notion of ‘information capital’, this article charts the elusive linkages between information-seeking practices, vocational preferences, and information-opportunity structures. Drawing on data from focus group interviews with over 300 advantaged and disadvantaged students, the research examines the information-seeking practices and circumstances of students attending high schools in an agricultural region of California. The article outlines a novel typology of four distinctive information-seeking situations: Internet-reliant information-seeking (IRIS), personal community-reliant information-seeking (PCRIS), educator-reliant information-seeking (ERIS), and multi-channel information-seeking (MCIS). Each of these situations brings together particular information-seeking strategies with specific vocational and educational preferences and particular information-opportunity structures. The four groups of information-seekers exhibit distinctive internalized stances towards what they define as appropriate information-seeking strategies and useful information-channels for educational and career planning. Illustrating these patterns, the article uncovers the connections between students’ educational and career aspirations, on the one hand, and their online and offline information-seeking strategies, on the other hand. By drawing these connections, the analysis provides rich empirical scaffolding for the concepts of information-channel preferences and information-opportunity structures as they relate to information capital, concepts which have remained empirically underdeveloped.

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References

2004Unequal childhoods: class, race, and family life 2002Internet Paradox Revisited 2005The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society 2004Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use 2002Towards a Sociology of Information Technology 2010The Internet and Social Inequalities 2008Salsa dancing into the social sciences : research in an age of info-glut 2009A TASTE FOR THE NECESSARY

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