Making Meaning

When people experience major life changes, this often impacts their self-presentation, networks, and online behavior in substantial ways. To effectively study major life transitions and events, we surveyed a large U.S. sample (n = 554) to create the Major Life Events Taxonomy, a list of 121 life events in 12 categories. We then applied this taxonomy to a second large U.S. survey sample (n = 775) to understand on average how much social readjustment each event required, how likely each event was to be shared on social media with different types of audiences, and how much online network separation each involved. We found that social readjustment is positively correlated with sharing on social media, with both broad audiences and close ties as well as in online spaces separate from one's network of known ties. Some life transitions involve high levels of sharing with both separate audiences and broad audiences on social media, providing evidence for what previous research has called social media as social transition machinery. Researchers can use the Major Life Events Taxonomy to examine how people's life transition experiences relate to their behaviors, technology use, and health and well-being outcomes.

Section: Social Media Information Sharing Behaviors Surrounding Life Transitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The major life events taxonomy: Social readjustment, social media information sharing, and online network separation during times of life transition

Haimson

Carter

Corvite

et al. 2021

“…Moreover, it makes similar sense to distinguish information making, taking, and other information interactions (cf. Ruthven, 2019) from sense-making (as envisioned by Dervin (2003) or Weick (1990)) and meaning-making as means rather than ends.…”

Section: Emphasis On Doingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making and taking information

Huvila

2021

Information behavior theory covers different aspects of the totality of information-related human behavior rather unevenly. The transitions or trading zones between different types of information activities have remained perhaps especially under-theorized. This article interrogates and expands a conceptual apparatus of information making and information taking as a pair of substantial concepts for explaining, in part, the mobility of information in terms of doing that unfolds as a process of becoming rather than of being, and in part, what is happening when information comes into being and when something is taken up for use as information. Besides providing an apparatus to describe the nexus of information provision and acquisition, a closer consideration of the parallel doings opens opportunities to enrich the inquiry of the conditions and practice of information seeking, appropriation, discovery, and retrieval as modes taking, and learning and information use as its posterities. | INTRODUCTIONConsidering the principal consensus on that information behavior (IB) covers the "totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking, and information use" (Wilson, 2000), the attention of information science research to the individual parts of that totality has been unevenly distributed (Case & Given, 2016). Much of earlier empirical research and many of the popular theories (Robinson, 2009) alike focus on information seeking whereas other areas, perhaps, in particular, information use (Savolainen, 2009), have remained both under-theorized and under-researched. In parallel, there has been a comparable, relative dearth of theorizing and models that would account for junctures between behaviors that account for the manipulation of information, for instance, by creation, organizing and managing, and its use. Earlier studies refer to "information creation and use" and how they are dynamically related to each other (Huuskonen, 2014) but seldom theorize this nexus in detail. This and other junctures are subsumed in some models that describe spaces and places (

“…During this period, schools and nonessential businesses were closed, residential communities quarantined, and all nonessential social interactions suspended. Considered as a group, those living with depression tend to exhibit information behaviors in crisis situations that differ from everyday situations (Ruthven, 2019; Westbrook, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chaos, expansion, and contraction: The information worlds of depression patients during theCOVID‐19 pandemic lockdown

Bao

Peng

2023

Although there have been several studies of people's information behaviors during the COVID‐19 epidemic, the information practices of a specific group of people—those with depression—have been neglected. This study reports on qualitative interviews with 24 participants to explore the information practices of people living with depression during the pandemic lockdown. We use the theory of information worlds and the concept of transition to understand the phases of chaos, expansion, and contraction that the information worlds of this group present during the lockdown, and examine the interrelationship between the information worlds and the individual's transition experiences during specific periods. Our results show that, first, emotion, body, and embodiment play key roles in the individual's information worlds, while individuals' information practices are regulated by the economic environment, group norms, and other social circumstances. Second, government‐level information, the volunteer community, social media, and nonhuman objects further impact participants' information practices. We suggest that health management strategies need to have different priorities at different stages of the transition, and attention should be paid to the provision of emotional information support systems during the pandemic lockdown.