Information as a construction

Abstract

The purpose of this review paper is to outline the constructivist approach to the notion of information from two perspectives. The first perspective explores the role of ‘constructed’ information in the ‘constructivist niche’ – a common name for the appropriate viewpoints in different science fields, such as cognitive and neuroscience, psychology, cybernetics and biology of cognition. The second perspective considers library and information science (LIS) papers in which information is treated as a constructed entity. This paper assumed the origin of the notion of information to be a construction as defined in the ‘constructivist niche’ that is based upon communication theory and cybernetics. Conversely, the origin of the notion of information as a construction as per LIS can be found in Bateson’s definition of information as a ‘difference which makes the difference,‘ as well as in the 1970s LIS definition wherein information is associated with the direction of a cognitive viewpoint, as in a ‘cognitive turn’. The study showed that ‘information as a construction‘, except in a few cases, did not play a significant role in the constructivist theories nor in LIS. LIS researchers reduce the concept of information to a subjective, socially-constructed entity which inherently results in different interpretations.