Literacy Information

It's day 3 of the i3 conference held at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. I chaired a session first thing, so this and the next post are not liveblogged (as I needed to give attention to my duties as chair!) but I took notes, which I've tiedied up (but not radically revised).
Firstly, Michael Olsson talked on Making Sense of the Past: the Information Practices of Field Archaeologists. Olsson focused on practices by which participants make sense of artefacts and archaeological sites: using an information practices approach (which focuses on the social context rather than on individual behaviours).
In doing this he also felt he was studying the process of how something becomes a document or information. There has been quite a lot of scholarly discussion about what constitutes a document (and a great deal about what is information!). In this research, Olsson came to understand the archaeological site itself as a document: the artefacts and structures found in it need to be understood in the context of the site. However, that context can be lost when the individual items are focused on and documented. Olsson defined an artefact by showing pictures of various objects such as skulls or bracelets, but identified that most of the artefacts on the sites he was investigating looked like grubby bits of stone. Also, for example, unusual mud (containing, say, remnants of food) could count as an artefact.
He had carried out his fieldwork in Orkney (the Iron Age Cairns Project and the Ness of Brodgar Neolithic site): prehistoric sites where there are no written records, so “artefacts are the only documents”. Olsson focussed on embodied practices, with information and knowledge involving the bodies of the people at the site. His methods for this study were ethnographic observation, interviews (sense making and conversational) and discourse analysis (of field notes, websites etc.).
Olsson pinpointed the critical moment where something is discovered in a trench, and a decision is made about whether to put it in the finds tray (at which point it becomes a document, a focus for information) or to put it on the spoils heap. Decisions about whether to select or discard are made based on personal expertise. There is a hierarchy of expertise (volunteer /trench leader /finds expert /site director). This sense making practice was embodied i.e. decisions were made on the look, feel and even taste of the item. Olsson gave the example of how you could tell something was a tool when you took it, and felt how it fitted in your hand.
A key point overall was that in making decisions about what an artefact was and whether to select it or not, people did not refer to outside information sources, and they did not tend to use technology: the information was gathered through bodily interaction with the artefact and the application of people's expert knowledge and experience. Part of learning to become an archaeologist was serving an apprenticeship where you got your hands dirty (literally) and learnt these practices (see the slide from his presentation, above).
There is an example of oner of Olsson's contributions to the Brogdar dig diary here: http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/nessofbrodgar/2013/07/dig-diary-monday-july-22-2013/

More liveblogging from the i3 conference held this week at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. Graeme Baxter, Rita Marcella and Mary O'Shea had authored the next presentation on Members of the Scottish Parliament on Twitter: constituency champions or party animals?. The presentation started by highlighting that Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have been identified as users of ICTs and specifically social media. However, studies have tended to focus on usage during election campaigns rather than during "peace time".
A previous study of voters' information needs, by the authors, had identified a gap between voters' needs and the politicians' information provision. In particular, people wanted information relating to their local constituency.
The present study was looking at MSPs Twitter use, to compare with a previous study of MSPs Twitter use during an election, and to see whether they were covering local constituency issues. The researchers looked at a 4 week period January-February 2014. It is worth noting that, although there wasn’t an election taking place shortly, this was a period when their was the long campaign leading to the Scottish independence referendum (asking voters whether Scotland should be an independent nation, which took place September 2014). Tweeting MSPs were identified, and tweets were analysed primarily manually. Each tweet was coded using a coding framework. It was then put into SPSS for quantitative analysis. The authors were drawing on a previous study of members’ use of social media by Norton (2013) who listed constituency roles including information provider and promoter of constituency interests.
81% of MSPs were identified as having a Twitter account (a small majority having adopted it since they became MSPs). In the 4 week period 10,404 tweets were sent. Number of posts varied from none, to hundreds. They had an average of 3,000 followers. In terms of the nature of the information exchange, 14.8% were primarily broadcast posts (their thoughts and opinions), 65.9% were retweets, links etc.; 12.7% were interaction with others; 6.5% were "unreciprocated engagement" e.g. following celebrities etc. and attempting to engage with them (mostly they get ignored). Thus overall most of the tweets are broadcast types (retweets etc. plus broadcast).
Comparison with their activity during an election campaign shows they are tweeting more but there is less enagagement or dialogue with others (it was 18.2% in the previous study). When looking specifically at constituency-related tweets; sports results and referendum and by-election campaigning were both excluded
However, when you excluded these, there was not much going on! They were mostly advertising their regular constituency surgeries, or commenting on local campaigns that they happen to be engaged with (e.g. bus routes; library cuts). However, they were more likely to tweet about sport, popular culture or what they were doing (e.g. soup for tea!) The 105 MSPs made 741 constituency-related secondary posting (e.g. retweeting local weather warnings; local crime appeals and warnings; new or threatened public services; human interest stories). However tweets about the referedum and Scottish-wide policies far outnumbered tweets on local issues.
Finally they did some “mystery shopper” type attempts to engage with MSPs. One was arounf the issue of the Red Road flats (which were going to be demolished) “Was safety the real reason for the Red Road u-turn” – 7 MSPs were contacted, none responded. It is felt that MSPs are reluctant to engage with sensitive issues. An insight is given by looking at the Twitter stream of MSP Kezia Dugdale who was more actively engaged, but then started getting a high volume of tweets, including some highly abusive tweets. She eventually withdrew from the free interaction.
Conclusions are that MSPs have become more frequent users of Twitter, but with an even bigger emphasis on one-way communication. However you have to acknowledge the restrictions of the 140 character tweet and the potential genuine problems facing genuine interaction. Also, although this was selected as a “peace time” period (with no immenent election) in fact the tweets showed that a lot of work was going into the campaign for the September independence referedum.
There were interesting questions at the end, for example about the extent people were following the party line on social media strategy, whether their status in the party affected how they might tweet.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven, Scotland, June 2015

An interesting set of presentations from an event organised by the Scottish Information Literacy Community and SLIC in February 2015 e.g. on Information Literacy and the housing sector; infolit and young people; health literacy http://www.slideshare.net/SLICINFO There is also a Storify of the event: https://storify.com/SLIC1991/information-literacy-symposium
Photo by Sheila Webber: apple blossom, May 2015

The Health Literacy Place is a Scottish site that includes the Health Literacy Action Plan for Scotland, other resources relating to health literacy in Scotland, and numerous links and embedded resources (e.g. videos). The site is produced by NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services Group. http://www.knowledge.scot.nhs.uk/healthliteracy.aspx
Photo by Sheila Webber: leaves, photoshopped, November 2014