Human Information Interaction

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Purpose: The goal of this study was to analyze the situation of information poverty among primary healthcare workers in Tehran. The main research question was to investigate their information poverty based on Chatman's information poverty theory. According to Chatman's theory, people who do not believe that information from outside the group can help them, tend to perform self-protective behaviors that limit access to information. Such behaviors intensify the information poverty of the primary healthcare workers, and since they are involved in the transfer of information between specialists and non-specialists, their information poverty can affect the society's information poverty. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the information poverty of primary healthcare workers in the field of health.
Method: This survey study was conducted by identifying the information poverty indicators and measuring the information poverty of 154 primary healthcare workers. Sampling was done by stratified random method, and data collection was done through a researcher-made questionnaire.
Results: The "deception" component indicated an attempt to present a false reality. "Secrecy" means non-disclosure of information, in the second place; And after that, there was "Situational Relevance" which indicated the selection of information. The lowest average was related to "Risk-taking", which showed the fear of the primary healthcare workers about the consequences of searching information. 41.6% of the primary healthcare workers were in the deceptive group, 21.6% in the situational relevance group, 19.2% in the secretive group and 13.6% in the risk-taking group.
Conclusion: The results showed the information poverty of primary healthcare workers. Most of them had a tendency to deceive others. A fifth of people paid attention to the situational relevance of the information. Some have fueled their information poverty by secrecy, and fewer by risk aversion. The placement of some in two categories refers to the overlap of some components. The most effective factor of deception was "reducing the risk of information seeking" and "distrust". "Value of information" and "use of insider information" were influential in situational relevance. "Coping with a lack of information processing skills" and "mistrust" were the main motivations behind the secrecy. "Regarding information as irrelevant" and "preservation of privacy" were effective on risk aversion.

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Background and Aim: There seems to be a conceptual link between some theories of human information behavior. These links exist because some of these theories have been derived from same theories in similar fields or have a same approach in theorizing.
Method: In this paper 3 theories of information behavior (information poverty, information overload and social capital) have been discussed and compared.
Results: Chatman’s information poverty theory pays attention to the cultural/behavioural aspect of the phenomenon and clarifies that membership within a social group contributes to information poverty. Information overload describes the situation in which one feels anxious and stressed due to encountering to too much information. Social capital is rooted in social network analysis and explains how the social resources inside one’s network influence the success of achieving desired information. Both information poverty and information overload point out information avoidance, where there exists information but access to it is restricted. Social capital and information poverty both focus on the role of social structure in information seeking and the importance of trust in society.
Conclusion: Libraries can generate social capital by presenting some social programs to help users overcome their information overload and poverty.

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Background and Aim: The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of information poverty, its levels and its causes in society   
Methods: The article is a review-analytical paper.
 Results: The findings show that information poverty is part of the larger problem of poverty and results from socioeconomic, educational and infrastructural issues. Information poverty can be discussed at macro (community), meso (society) and micro (personal) levels. Several factors, including the lack of access to information, the inability of meaning to information, socioeconomic and infrastructural factors and context-related factors, contribute to the creation or intensification of information poverty in society. It has also been shown that educational, economic/ financial, institutional, social/ cultural, mental/ diagnostic, personal/ attitudinal, and information awareness contributes to the creation of information poverty.    
Conclusion: Information poverty is a concept that is less addressed in the literature of knowledge and information science. Considering the necessity of recognizing it in order to confront and reduce it in society, this paper, while addressing the importance of information poverty, the concepts of poverty, Information, information poverty, information poor, vulnerable groups, and reasons causing information poverty, and showed that this concept has overlapping themes with inequality of information, information gap, information divide, information rich and poor, digital divide and the balance of information