Justifying Cognitive Authority Decisions: Discursive Strategies of Information Seekers
Pamela J. McKenzie · The Library Quarterly · 2003
Patrick Wilson's concept of cognitive authority provides a framework for understanding the basis on which an individual decides whether a particular information source is authoritative for her or him. However, a cognitive approach treats authority as a stable assessment made by individual information seekers, and it may not fully consider the ways in which individuals' cognitive authority decisions operate within the prevailing forms of authoritative knowledge that are held as legitimate and official by participants in a particular context. Constructionist approaches, specifically Jonathan Potter's perspective on everyday fact construction and Rom Harré's positioning theory, can offer strategies for understanding the ways in which information seekers represent and justify information sources as authoritative. An analysis of transcripts of interviews with a specific group of information seekers (pregnant women) identifies the context-specific discursive techniques that they used in enhancing or undermining the authority of peer and professional information sources.