Dissertation Information for Lisa Renee Schiff NAME: - Lisa Renee Schiff
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science
SCHOOL:
- University of California, Berkeley (USA) (1998)
ADVISORS: - Yale M. Braunstein
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Patrick Wilson - Judith E. Innes
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: Ideology and the production of information
Abstract: This research investigated the relationship between ideology and the production of information. It was posited that ideology influences information as it is produced, and that there is potential for information production to influence ideology. Furthermore, it was claimed that if this relationship did exist, it should be possible to find the mechanisms by which ideology and information interact.
The real-world practice of gathering data about homeless people in San Francisco was examined. Research focused on the prominent agents involved, the practices they engaged in, the resources they valued, and the field(s) in which they operated. These results were complemented by an historical review of homelessness in San Francisco and the data production practices that have existed within that history.
A dominating ideology, the individual-responsibility-ideology, was found to operate within the field of homelessness, which explains homelessness as the result of an individual's personal circumstances. Variants of this ideology move along a continuum of blaming the individual for poor choices, to seeing the individual as a victim of circumstances.
A suite of mechanisms were discovered that act as channels for the interplay between ideology and data production. They include: identity construction, individuation, definitions, hierarchy of knowledge, desublimation, codification, and distraction.
Research results also indicate that the more powerful direction of influence is from the dominating ideology to data production rather than the reverse. The individual-responsibility-ideology influences the types of questions that are routinely asked, and shapes the relationships between agents engaged in the data production itself. This is not to say that data production has no influence on ideology. In fact, it tends to reinforce it, because it is so highly shaped by it. A cyclical pattern is established, whereby the ideology informs the data production process, and the results of that process then confirm the ideology. Even those agents who attempt to challenge this ideology are often in fact stuck responding to it, as opposed to offering alternatives.
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MPACT Scores for Lisa Renee Schiff A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:14:22
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