The Role of Social Networks in the Information Age

This week I wanted to focus on Castells and Christakis and Fowler, under the specific theme of Networks. This will be important, not only in analysing the significance of networks when it comes to understanding knowledge and information, but I also suspect that such a focus will bear fruit for later topics (such as Virtual communities).

I felt it was important to cover Manuel Castells separately, because unlike the readings addressed in my last post, he examines contemporary society with due attention to the overarching global capitalist system and its most powerful entities. The film; The Network, does an excellent job of outlining this overarching system for us:

However, the real significance of Castells for me wasn’t so much his attention on the overarching context in which ‘Information Society’ exists, but rather his focus on the network (the concept, not the film).

I came across the work for Fowler and Christakis in a TED lecture. They distinguish the difference between groups (a set of people defined by an attribute) and networks (a group with a specific set of connections between people in the group). They argue that such ties are often more important than the individuals within the group. They assert that such ties explain why the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and why they are fundamental in trying to understand social phenomena. Their research has significant implications for our relations with people and for how society changes.

Christakis and Fowler explain that the two fundamental aspects of social networks are connection (the dynamic topology of the network) and contagion (what flows through the connection). They also explain rules regarding the structure and function of social networks:

1)      Networks are shaped by the people within them.

a.       Homophily (contagion) – People have the unconscious or conscious tendency to associate with others who resemble them and share interests, histories, political affiliations, etc.

b.      Structure (connection).

                                                               i.      People can influence how many people they are connected to.

                                                             ii.      People influence how densely interconnected others are in their network.

                                                            iii.      People can influence how central they are in the network (power).

2)      Networks shape the people within them.

a.       Location – Networks shape people based on the position they hold within its architecture.

b.      Transitivity ­– the degree to which other people who are connected have an impact on a person in the network who is connected to those people.

c.       Centrality – the degree to which those whom one is connected to are connected themselves makes one more or less susceptible to what is flowing through the network.

3)      Contagion spreads through a network based on people’s tendency to influence and copy one another and such influence extends to three degrees of separation and the structure of the network. This can happen in two ways:

a.       Hyperdyadic spread – A contagion spreads merely through contact (e.g. like a piece of gossip)  

b.      Spread through Reinforcement – A contagion spreads after reinforcement from several people in the network (e.g. for complex contagion such as norms or mores). Christakis research on the spread of Obesity can be attributed to this rule. He found that if you’re friends, friends, friend is obese, it significantly raises your risk of being obese too – even if you don’t know that person.

4)      The Network has a life of its own.

a.       A network exhibits emergent properties that are independent of its constituents. Christakis and Fowler point to the works of physicists who were able to accurately employ mathematical models to make accurate predictions of Mexican waves – demonstrating that one did not require knowledge of the biology or the psychology of the constituents to understand certain aspects of the social phenomenon.

It is useful to mention here that strong links between Christakis and Fowler’s theories and Barlow’s theories of information as a life from, as a relationship and as an activity can be observed. However, without going on such a (fairly enticing) tangent, I would like to bring the focus back to Castells article on the implications for ‘Information Society’.

Castells describes a globally networked Capitalist system that is extremely flexible, which allows it to simultaneously include and exclude people, territories and activities based upon the dominant values and interests that characterise the system. He also identifies that while the networking structure itself is decentralised, by nature of the overarching system in which it functions, it has allowed organisations to network and centralise to form supranational organisation with significant worldwide influence. Nations and organisations are surrendering sovereignty and control to supranational blocs such as the European Union, supra-military entities like NATO and supra-economic organisations like the IMF.

He argues that no major historical transformation has taken place in technology, or in the economy, without an interrelated organizational transformation. Castells argues that ultimately all networks come out ahead by restructuring, even if they change their composition, their membership, and their tasks. Network resilience is thus determined by such flexibility. Castells characterises some of the negative effects of networks in the Information Age:
 

1.       The de-socialization of labour and the increasing flexibility and individualization of labour performance.

2.       Over-exploitation of excluded classes and groups (women, immigrants, youth, etc)

3.       Social exclusion of groups by central groups who hold the main values of the system (a fundamental aspect that characterises that the power of the privileged in society is in their control over exclusivity)

Fowler and Christakis explain such exclusion as Positional inequality, which is caused not by whom one is, but by who one is connected to. However, they also point to the fact (as Castells does) that people with many connections may become better connected and be better rewarded whereas those with fewer ties may be left behind. They argue that this is the real digital divide. As Fowler and Christakis put it: “Network inequality creates and reinforces inequality of opportunity”.  (p. 302)

Christakis and Fowler go on to argue that the great project of the twenty-first century is to understand how the human super-organism comes to be greater than the sum of its individuals. There is no doubt, (especially in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected through ICTs), that the implications on people around the world of Christakis’ and Fowler’s research, are very significant indeed.

What Fowler and Christakis seem to fail to focus on however, is the ideology held by central figures in a social network and how this influences network structure through exclusivity. It would be worth (thought I don’t have the time here to do it) looking into how power functions in such networks in the context of Foucauldian discourse theory.

However for now, I believe Castells does make the important point that ICTs and its acceleration of globalisation has in fact benefited primarily those in power – a much needed counter discourse to the ‘blessings of globalisation and the information age’ we commonly hear.

Given that the most influential, interconnected and centralised networks are those which function under a capitalist doctrine, it would be interesting to question to what extent an ideology influences the very structure and flow of a network. And further to this, to what extent would individuals of the network containing an overarching ideological doctrine be able to identify that doctrine? Also, would not the individuals who identify, criticize or challenge the dominant discourse not simply be sidelined, excluded and cast into Castells' fourth world?

An analysis of ideology, power, and how they function within a network is wanton here. Though I can’t help but feel that such a pursuit would make me feel a little bit like Alice... Tumbling down the rabbit hole.

References

Barlow, John Perry (1994) A Taxonomy of Information. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science.

Castells, Manuel (1999) Information Technology, Globalization and Social Development: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Discussion Paper No. 114

Christakis, Nicholas A. & Fowler, James H. (2011) Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – How You Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, Do. Back Bay Books, London.

PIK Week 7: The Information Society

I thought I would begin this week’s Journal with the article by Frank Webster, who goes in to some depth about what we mean by Information society. He argues that literature on information society often fails to establish in what ways and why information is becoming more central in our times.

He distinguishes five ways of defining Information Society. As:
 

·         Technological

·         Economic

·         Occupational

·         Spatial

·         Cultural

 

Technological
 

He argues that firstly, the futurists (who take on a primarily technological definition of Information Society) fail to address how to measure Information Communication Technologies and when a society can be deemed to have entered the ‘Information age’. He goes further however, by making a much stronger argument in addition to this (which nails the coffin – or put another way, secures the electro-lock on the Cryo-chamber – for the futurists) by stating that such technological definitions of Information Society is not only technologically determinist, but in fact allows for the relegation of economic, political and social dimensions of Information Society into an entirely separate division.

I agree strongly with Webster where he states that the social is a demonstratively integral part of technological innovation. He points to social values imbued within a variety of technological products, like the architectural design of bridges, branding of vehicles, etc. To further this point, I’d like to visit an example of my own of a technological organisation that is at the very horizon of technological innovation. Macintosh is a prime example of a successful corporation employing a strict level of branding that allows their users to identify culturally with their products. You would be hard pressed to find an Apple product made after the nineties that wouldn’t identify you culturally as a ‘hipster’ in today’s society. Furthermore, Macintosh undoubtedly adopts a very intentional strategy in the design and innovation of their products to specifically appeal culturally to their target market. Notably, the organisations at the forefront of Information society in fact increase the level of to which there products are endowed with cultural value, not (as the futurists would hold) strive to separate their products from cultural value.
 
The one critisim I do have here for Webster, is that he does not go far enough – and fails to analyse the Ideological basis within which ‘Information Society’ functions. My own view with regards to this is that contemporary consumerism is the primary ideological engine which drives much of the technological Innovation today, and an anaylsis of ‘Information Society’ without looking at the role of consumerism (and it’s overarching global capitalist ideology) is shortsighted.
 

Economic

 

Walter also addresses the works of Machlup and Porat and justifiably argues that their method of measuring ‘Information Society’ by aggregating the GNP of information services and products is lacking (grossly so if I might add). Not only is there distinction between informational and non-informational domains very simplistic but there are serious assumptions behinds such research that trivialises the complexity and value of information products and services within and ‘Information Society’. Walter uses the example of comparing the (financial value) of a tabloid newspaper to a finance oriented newspaper to illustrate this point, clearly the dollar value given to these two papers themselves is not reflective of the actual value of the information within them and the (financial) gain for society.

Further to this, there is a (abhorrent) lack of regard for economic externalities that plague any measure of value based on gross domestic product. Also, as Barlow argues in his article The Economy of Ideas, the nature of information is anything but similar to economic products and services, it’s value cannot be based on scarcity as most economic products measured by GDP are, and further, the idea that ‘Information’ can be owned is extremely problematic in itself. I think that Walter once again misses the underlying point here, that the very reason that Machlup and Porat’s trivialisation of Information in society has even come to be regarded as meaningful within the field is the wider over-arching global Capitalist Ideology where such economic discourse is held in high regard (despite their methods being woefully unequipped to deal with measuring or understanding ‘Information Society’).
 

Occupational
 

The occupational definition of ‘Information Society’ isn’t as straightforward. Walter argues that this definition is quite different in that it focuses on occupational change which stresses the transformative power of information itself rather than the influence of information technologies (as the past two definitions seemed to do). Walter cites Leadbeater, who proclaims that thinking smart, being inventive, and having the capacity to develop and exploit networks is the key to the new ‘weightless’ economy.

Although I agree with the notion that such factors are the ones that allow a person to be successful in today’s society, I vehemently oppose Leadbeater’s characterisation of our economy as weightless. If anything the global economy is now heavier than it has ever been by virtue of its incredible interdependence. One has only to look at the Global Financial Crisis to recognise that the manipulation of highly valued ‘weightless’ derivatives in the financial sector ultimately led to Global instability and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of livelihoods across the world. It is extremely important to recognise that any seemingly ‘weightless’ or abstract manipulation of information is grounded (albeit through an inextricably intertwined and indecipherable network) in real products, real services, real people and ultimately, with real consequences – without this component, any reference to an ‘Information Society’ is meaningless.
 

Walter goes on to cite a range of influential writers (Reich, Drucker and Castells) who suggest that people with the ability to manipulate information lead and energize the economy. While I think that this is true, I think it is important to recognise that in fact, there is little difference between the use of the term ‘information’ here and the term ‘capital’, which begs the question, if we are to define ‘Information Society’ this way, is it really any different from Industrial Society in any meaningful way?  Are we not simply arguing that we are living in an advanced Industrial Society with the advent of information technologies? Again the point I’m trying to get at here is that an occupational definition that focuses on the transformative power of ‘Information Society’ only reinforces the idea that it is primarily governed by the principles of a Global Capitalist Economy.

 

Cultural
 

Walter also addresses the cultural conception of ‘Information Society’ and points to people who have argued that the increase in symbolic interplay in contemporary society can be regarded as a sign that we are in an ‘Information Society’. Walter describes the nature of this media-laden society and it paradoxical predicament whereby an overload of symbols (conveyed through multiple mediums of media) produces an absence of meaning. Walter notes that audiences are self aware and reflective in the face of this influx of symbols, that all signs are received with scepticism, and hence reinterpreted and refracted from their intended meaning. Symbols thus lose their connection to reality, and recognise that there are no longer any ‘truths’. Walter quotes Mark Poster in the article:
 

“in putting together signs for their homes, work and selves, [people] happily revel in their artificiality, playfully mixing different images to present no distinct meaning, but instead to derive ‘pleasure’ in parody. In this information society we have then a set of meanings [which] is communicated [but which] have no meaning”
 

This effect, where the abundance of symbols creates a dislocation of meaning is one that I can agree is a very real phenomenon. However, again, I think both Poster and Walter miss the significance of the underlying dominant consumerist ideology which functions through subtlety to create an all pervasive and dislocated communicative meta-medium where the meaning of the message is not stripped but intensified.

 Undoubtedly, the counter argument to this position would be that the symbols of consumerism themselves are rendered meaningless. However, Unlike Christianity (the Cross), or Communism (the Hammer and Sickle/the Star), consumerism is not limited to a single or a few symbols. Thus, this effect of meaning negation only serves to strengthen the intended message conveyed by consumerism. This is because people (who, still have to worry about their home mortgages, their 40 hour plus work weeks and the insecurity of their identity, arguably, do not ‘happily’ revel in the simple artificiality of their lives in such a context) are still grounded in the everyday experience of the system and have no means of locating the symbolic source of the system of power, let alone resisting it.  The point is, that whatever the symbol be, whether it’s the McDonalds logo or whether a stencil of Che Guevara, the meaning, for someone who is lives in the global capitalist system, is the same:

Poster’s very presumption that people take ‘pleasure’ in parodying various symbols, is not only contestable (as it is arguable that this attempt at parodying symbols is more an attempt to cope with the overarching system) but further to this, it is a very reification of the consumerist ideology that encourages its subjects to consume to attain pleasure. To broaden my argument here, essentially what has occurred as a result media technologies creating an overflow of symbols is an exploitation of every facet of our lives (our sexuality, ethnicity, political inclinations, etc) to push through an ideology of consumption in a way in which resistance is very difficult. The technology is used by those with power to hegemonize people’s belief systems in order to justify their positions of privilege and power. The people are thus subject to society that is effectively ‘walled in’ by a barrier of consumer products and at the same time feel devoid of any meaning. Pink Floyd’s “Empty Spaces” animation is appropriate here (at least after the 1:25 minute mark).
 

Spatial

The Spatial concept of ‘Information Society’ emphasises information networks and its nature as a prominent feature of social organisation. I do like this emphasis, because I hold that the networks, and the structure of the networks within a society is a essential feature when characterising a society. Walter challenges this conception by asking why this should allow us to categorise societies as ‘Information Societies’? He asks whether the intensification of information flow within a society should mark a new one? While I don’t believe the intensification of informational flow is the mark of a new one, it certainly is the precursor to one as traditional modes of discourse tend to change rapidly.
 

Walter goes on to ask why one couldn’t argue that information networks have been around for a very long time (he cites the postal service, and telephone facilities as an example). Personally, I would argue that information networks have been around for a very long time, in fact I’d go so far as to argue that they’ve been around since the Paleolithic period when hominids first begun to develop language and small networks of societies (where clearly, networks were not limited to technological systems). For this reason, I would hold that this definition is a very important one that emphasises information networks and defines all societies since the beginning of human history.
 

Furthermore, I would argue that we are not living in an information society (the idea is senseless if we regard all societies to be based on information networks in the first place) but rather, we are living in the final stages of an advanced global capitalist paradigm, which is the over-aching societal system within which many diverse social, political and economic characteristics exist. While all the aforementioned definitions of Information Society are useful in understanding the features and characterisations of contemporary society, they should be regarded only as precisely that: characteristics and features of a wider overarching globalised capitalist system.

I’d like to very briefly address Masuda and the two premises he makes in understanding ‘Information Society’.
 

  1) That the production of information values and not material values will be the driving force behind the formation and development of society. (hasn’t this always been the case?) 
 

  2) The past developmental pattern of human society can be used as a historical analogical model for future society – i.e. industrial society is the social model from which we can predict the composition of information society.
 

With his first premise, Masuda argues that material productive power was the driving force behind the development of society and now it is computer-communication technology. Again, I have to disagree here, by arguing that the driving force behind any society are the set of beliefs and values that hold power which ultimately shape the direction the society takes. Technology merely facilitates the process. Furthermore, it is arguable that behind any form of technology a certain set of information values always need to be produced in order to make effective and efficient use of a technology (whether it be computers, steam engines, or bronze tools).
 

With regards to the second premise, I would argue that the only analogy that can be drawn between Information and Industrial ‘Societies’ is the different ways in which such technologies impact the existing overarching ideology. The technologies only serve facilitate a change in society, that cannot be held to be the new society itself.
 

Again, while Masuda’s analogy is very useful in helping us characterise contemporary society and how it will change or develop since the Industrial age (which for a paper from the 1990s, he does very effectively), it does not, however, help when it comes to trying to define a ‘new society’. An analysis of the shifting power dynamics between people as a result of technological change is a much more useful approach to understanding how technology facilitates change in societies.
 

Castells is very aware of the significance of global capitalism and it’s relation to the Information age. But further to this, he makes a very interesting argument with regards to the importance of networks in contemporary society. Given the time (and the length of this post), It would be best to address Castells point of view in another post where I plan to synthesize his ideas with the ideas of a another writer, Nicholas A. Christakis, who also places a lot of significance on the role that networks play in today’s society. 

References

Barlow, J. P. (1994) ‘The Economy of Ideas’, Wired, Issue 2.03 viewed 20 September 2012, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html?pg=8&topic=>

Webster, Frank. (2002) Chapter1: Information and the Idea of an Information Society. Theories of the information society London : Routledge, 2002.

Masuda, Y. (1990) 'Image of the Future Information Society', in his Managing in the information society: releasing synergy Japanese style, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.3-10.

PIK Week 6: Information Communities – Social Knowledge

One of the theories introduced by this week’s topic was the theory of Information Poverty (Chatman 2000). I want to focus on this theory because I’ve realized that information poverty is in fact an enormous area in the field of information behavior which (according to what I’ve read heretofore) seems largely to have been overlooked.

I had defined this term very simply in my first post as a situation where one is unable to attain a specific component of information based on their information need. In fact, there are a plethora of social aspects that characterize information poverty and I realized my initial premise that Information poverty is primarily about access is flawed.

Some of the aspects that serve to enable information poverty are:

· Individuation – Where a person will be secretive and self-protective due to a perception of distrust of those around him (alienation theory).

· Avoidance/disinterest – Where people are simply not interested in or have reason to avoid engaging with information.

· Social Norms and Normative behavior – Social rules that dictates a person’s behavior. Driven by mores and the rules of a social world, normative behavior provides a predictable routine and manageable approach to everyday reality.

· Social types – How a person is classified within a social situation determining both ones access to information and their ability to use it.

· Over-identification – Where people identify strongly with a certain type of identity.

Chatman states that the theory of information poverty explains the way in which people define their experiences in order to survive in a world of distrust. Chatman notes that given this situation people may very well be aware that there is valuable, relevant and useful information – but pursuing the information is not seen as worthwhile. Chatman also identifies some of the aspects that will allow people to cross information boundaries:

1) When the information is perceived as critical.

2) When there is a collective expectation that the information is relevant.

3) When a perception exists that the ‘life in the round’ is no longer functioning.

Again, I’d like to stress that I find this theory very significant given that the field of information science seems to have a multitude of answers for questions of ‘how and why we do know?” but very little by way of ‘how and why we don’t know?’. The theory of Information Poverty seems to at least to begin to address this.

This week’s reading on Savolainen draws a distinction between information behavior and Information Practice. Savolainen identifies that information behavior primarily draws on the cognitive view point and that this contrasts with the Social Constructivism that Information Practice draws upon. The two have very different ontological and epistemological origins as they draw on different metaphysical perspectives. While the umbrella term 'information behavior' is founded in enlightenment objectivism, Social Constructivism rejects this view in favour of a view that sees Truth as partial and identifies that meaning is negotiated through relationships within existing discourses and power relations - hence the term 'information practice'.

Savolainen cites Stephen Feinman and his colleagues to further define information behavior as “specific actions performed by an individual that are specifically aimed at satisfying information needs”. This can be juxtaposed against his citation of Volosinov who defines Information practice as assuming that the processes of information seeking and use are created socially and dialogically. Volosinov also argues that Discourses are ideological in the sense that they win over speakers by formulating positive associative content for concepts which act to legitimize themselves.

Savolainen concludes that the major difference within the field wide discourse is that information behaviour is primarily seen to be triggered by needs and motives, while the discourse on information practice focuses on the continuity and habitualization of activities affected and shaped by social and cultural factors. He stresses the importance of self-reflexive and critical approaches to researchers’ own discursive formations and normative viewpoints.

For the final part of my post this week, I would like to touch on Dr Olsson’s work: Power/Knowledge: the Discursive construction of an Author and focus strongly on the Foucaldian underpinnings of this work. Olsson uses the method of discourse analysis after interviewing several people in the field about Dervin to determine that not only were they involved in meaning making based on the aboutness of information, but also that an integral part of their constructive processes was the credibility of one’s message. The research showed elements of Foucault’s ‘Author Function’ at play and that participants constructive processes were involved with the related components: the construction of meaning and the construction of authority. Essentially the research reinforced the idea that the meaning of a work is not determined by the author, but is rather socially constructed and re-constructed by the reader or the community of readers (who possess their own discourses) given a particular socio-political and historic context.

In the study, Olsson uses a Focauldian perspective which sees the concept of discourse as a complex network of relationships between individuals, texts, ideas, and institutions. Each one of these “nodes” can have an impact, to varying degrees, on other nodes, and on the dynamic of a discourse as a whole (indeed Foucault argues that any given discourse will give rise to a counter-discourse).

Here we can see the importance given to the role of language for this position - language isn’t just about conveying thought, it structures the way we experience and shapes how we see the world. I can see how, in the context of constructing social reality this focus on language and its role in shaping our social understanding of our world is very important. However, I’m not so certain about extending this position to an external reality.

Indeed, for Foucault, there is no universal understanding that is beyond history and society. At first I interpreted Foucault's position here as meaning that there is no external position of certainty, that there is no truth outside of inter-subjective truth (which clashed with the third assumption I made in an earlier post about reality and existence being external to people). However, what Dr Olsson clarified to us in class was that Foucault’s argument was not that it was certain that there is no external position of reality but rather, that if there is an externally based reality, we cannot know that reality. This position in fact works quite well with my own assumptions that reality and existence is undefinable and cannot be known through consciousness in its entirety.

Another important aspect of Foucault’s thought that appears in Olsson’s work was the dynamic between Knowledge and Power. Foucault challenged the traditional Western conceptions of power by challenging the Freudian and Marxian strategies of locating power in the realm of a repressive, centered, and ultimately debilitating mode of oppression. He constructed knowledge and power not as a separate entity but rather as interrelated products of the same social process. Foucault argues that power produces knowledge and that there is no knowledge that does not presuppose power relations. He essentially constructs power and knowledge as an inductive process. Olsson quotes an interesting excerpt by Foucalt:

“Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere. . . Power comes from below; that is there is no binary and all encompassing opposition between ruler and ruled at the root of power relations . . . no such duality extending from the top down”

Essentially, discourse communities are imbued with power given that they hold an accepted truth within their discursive context. I must admit here that I’m not quite sure about what Foucault means by ‘power comes from below’ and that there is ‘no binary/all encompassing opposition between ruler and the ruled’. What I would like to do in a later post if I get the chance is to contrast this idea with Hegel’s master-slave dialectic in the hope of arriving at a better understanding.

What I would like to visit here however is the Foucauldian concept of biopower. To begin this visitation however, I’d first like to elucidate a Foucauldian term; the ‘technology of power’. Foucault characterizes Discipline by a complex bundle of power technologies.

For Foucault, power is exercised with intention. Instead of analyzing the difficult problem of who has which intentions however, he focuses on what is intersubjectively accepted knowledge about how to exercise power. He identifies that power presupposes freedom in the sense that power isn’t enforced, but rather makes people behave in other ways than they would have originally done.

He analyses the link between power and knowledge by outlining a form of covert power that works through people rather than only on them. Foucault argues that discourses gain power as more people accept the particular views associated with that discourse as common or assumed knowledge (the process by which truth is normalized). Or put another way: Panopticization.

As state apparatus come to terms with the internet and its capability for surveillance, Foucault’s idea of the Panopticon and how it is used as a technology of power has never been more relevant. I predict that the digital rights and privacy movement is set to become a significant counter-discursive power in its own right, as my favorite rapper Robert Foster would attest to:

Whereas discipline involves technology of power deployed to make individuals behave (to be efficient and productive workers for example), Biopower deploys technology of power to manage populations or people as a group (to ensure a healthy workforce for example). It relates to the government's concern with fostering the life of the population. Given the context of the modern era (where power must be justified both rationally and politically), Biopower is utilized by an emphasis on the protection of life as opposed to the threat of death, on the regulation of the body and on the production of other technologies of power. Biopower can be manifested through regulation of customs, habits, health, reproductive practices, family and well-being.


Sources:

Chatman, E. 2000. 'Keynote Address: Framing Social Life In Theory And Research.' Information Seekng in Context: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Research in Information Needs, Seeking and Use in Different Contexts; 2000 August 16-18; Goteburg Sweden. L. Hoglund.

Fillingham, L.A. 1993, Foucault for Beginners, Writers and Readers Publishing, London.

Foucault, Michel 1984 'What is an Author? In Rabinow, Paul (1984) The Foucault Reader London; Penguin Books, 101-120.

Foucault, Michel 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 195-210.

Olsson, M. 2007 Power/Knowledge: the Discursive construction of an Author. Library Quarterly . 77 (2), 219-240.

Savolainen, R. 2007 Information Behaviour and Information Practice: Reviewing the 'Umbrella Concepts' of Information-Seeking Studies. Library Quarterly. 77 (2), 109-132.

Wikiversity 2012, Wikiversity, viewed 6 September 2012, <https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Foucault>