The notion of context in "Information Interaction in Context"
Tefko Saračević · 2010
As a process, information interaction is (fairly) well defined; considerable amount of research is devoted to the topic in various areas, particularly in human information behavior and human-computer interaction. In contrast the notion of "context" in which this interaction takes place is ill or not defined and rarely researched -- mostly it is taken as a primitive term. Paul Watzlawick (1921-2007) facing a similar issue as to the notion of "communication" formulated five axioms in his theory of communication; the most famous is the first axiom: "One Cannot Not Communicate (Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren)." [1]. Directly following Watzlawick's axioms, this address is an attempt to formulate five axioms related to "context" in information interaction. We start with an assumption that information interaction involves two distinct parties: an information system on the one hand, and an information user (or group of users) on the other hand. Systems and users are partners in interaction. Both have a context, but since there is no interaction without a user (or group), we concentrate here mostly with the user side of the context.