Exploring the social realities of online communities through the lens of a Human Information Behavior framework

Abstract

Sonnenwaldâ s evolving framework for human information behavior (1999) was systematically applied to a set of online community literature to examine whether the frameworkâ s propositions are supported or not, so as to uncover open problems for socio-technical studies of online communities and human information behaviorâ what aspects that are relevant to understanding the reciprocal relationships between technologically-mediated systems, communities and information resources should social informatics be examining, but hasnâ t? Findings are presented.