VOL. 21 NO. 4, DECEMBER, 2016
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Information activity in serious leisure
Jenna Hartel, Andrew M. Cox, and Brian L. Griffin
Abstract
Background. In the past decade, scholars of information science have started to conduct
research on information behaviour in serious leisure. Presently, these studies lack common
concepts and terms and empirical discoveries are not easy to assemble into theory.
Aim. This conceptual and methodological paper surveys the aforementioned research area
and introduces Anders Hektor's model of information behaviour in conjunction with the
serious leisure perspective as a means to systematically study information behaviour in
serious leisure.
Method. Three methods are employed. The first is a selective literature review and
intellectual history of research into information behaviour in serious leisure. The second is a
conceptual analysis of Hektor's model that relates its key features to the serious leisure
perspective. The third consists of a deductive audit of three forms of serious leisure (the
liberal arts hobby, amateur musicianship, and the hobby of running), utilising the
frameworks, concepts, and terms outlined in the paper.
Results. Studies of information behaviour in serious leisure have increased and deepened
in the past decade, largely through idiographic case studies. Hektor's model of information
behaviour, with its locus in everyday life and precise delineation of eight information
activities, can complement such research designs. A deductive audit guided by Hektor's
model illuminated information activities within the three forms of serious leisure and
enabled comparative observations.
Conclusions. When combined with the serious leisure perspective, Hektor's model enables
research that is comparative and more precise. However, the extent to which this model
captures physical or embodied information should be further examined.
Introduction
The speciality of information behaviour has traditionally focused on academic
scenarios or workplace settings. We use the term information behaviour to
mean 'the many ways in which human beings interact with information, in
particular, the ways in which people seek and utilise information' (Bates, 2010
,
p. 2381). Later, we adopt Hektor's (2001
) conception of information activity
which is defined and explained in Part 2. In the 1970s scholars began to explore
the broader research horizon of everyday life (Savolainen, 2009
), including
human experiences that are pleasurable and profound (Kari and Hartel, 2007
).
One such activity in everyday life is serious leisure, that is:
the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core
activity that people find so substantial, interesting, and fulfilling
that, in the typical case, they launch themselves on a (leisure)
career centered on acquiring and expressing a combination of its
special skills, knowledge, and experience (Stebbins, 2009
, p.
622).
Hartel (2003
, 2005) has argued that serious leisure is information-rich and
merits special attention in information science.
To expedite inquiry into serious leisure and its information dimension, this
paper introduces a model of human information behaviour by Anders Hektor
(2001
), which has been relatively neglected in information behaviour
scholarship to date. Yet his model contains the first inductively generated
typology of information use in everyday life and complements the serious
change font
leisure perspective explained in several felicitous ways, explained in Part 2.
The conceptual and methodological paper that follows has two guiding research
questions. The first is: In what ways is Hektor's model beneficial for
understanding the information behaviour of those engaged in serious leisure
pursuits? Then conversely we ask: What are the shortcomings of Hektor's
model in characterising information behaviour in serious leisure?
This paper has three main parts: (1) a selective literature review of information
behaviour research into serious leisure; (2) an introduction to Hektor's vision of
information behaviour in everyday life, outlining its typology of information
activity, and highlighting its compatibility with the serious leisure perspective;
and (3) a demonstration of the proposed strategy for using Hektor's model to
perform a deductive audit of information activity in three forms of serious
leisure: the liberal arts hobby, amateur classical musicianship, and the hobby of
running. A discussion section critically considers the approach and notes the
challenge of capturing embodied (see Bates, 2006
) or corporeal (Lloyd, 2009,
2010
) information behaviour in serious leisure.
Part 1. Information behaviour research in serious leisure
To perform this literature review and intellectual history, the authors surveyed
writings on information behaviour in everyday life and leisure from the major
research journals and conference proceedings within the field of information
science. Relevant writings on information behaviour by sociologist Robert
Stebbins, architect of the serious leisure perspective, were also considered.
Bates (1974
, p. 53) was the first to articulate the importance of life information,
which she defined as any '…information needed for successful living', and it
ranged from health and safety to personal development and hobbies. Later,
Dervin (1983a
) formulated the sense-making methodology in which
information behaviour is construed metaphorically as a process of bridging gaps
across uncertain everyday situations. Chatman (1991
) pioneered ethnographic
studies of people living on the margins of society, and advanced a theory of
information behaviour as small worlds that are characterised by a routine and
narrow supply of information and a preference for human sources. Savolainen
(1995
) cast everyday life information seeking within Bourdieu's theory of
habitus; as such, information behaviour is a part of the activities undertaken to
maintain a particular way of life. Altogether, in the latter decades of the past
century, these works, among a few others, shifted attention from academic and
workplace scenarios and opened up a research frontier about information
behaviour in everyday life. Vakkari's (2008
) report on trends in information
behaviour scholarship noted that studies of everyday life had more than
doubled between the 1996 and 2008 Information Seeking in Context
conferences.
Yet the emerging investigations of everyday life information behaviour had a
predominant focus on problems, such as illness or unemployment, and the
research area was incomplete and unbalanced. In response, Kari and Hartel
(2007
, p. 1131) advanced a contextual research programme to investigate the
'higher things in life' that is, '…pleasurable or profound phenomena,
experiences, or activities that transcend the daily grind'. Likewise, Fulton
(2009
) drew attention to the fact that a positive affect exists in information
behaviour, which she coined 'the pleasure principle'. These assertions about the
positive or enjoyable side of everyday life information behaviour were fortified
by earlier observations of pleasure readers who find information in books
without consciously seeking it, thereby gaining tremendous pleasure and
satisfaction (Ross, 1999
).
One undeniably pleasurable realm of everyday life is leisure. Ranging from
mindless naps and bubble baths to craft and sport activities demanding the
utmost concentration, leisure is highly heterogeneous. To navigate leisure as a
research setting, Hartel (2003
, 2005) introduced the serious leisure perspective
(Stebbins, 2001b
), a grounded theoretical framework of leisure that brings the
distinct nature of leisure activities into focus. The serious leisure perspective
identifies three main types of leisure: serious pursuits centred on learning (e.g.,
being an amateur volleyball player); casual leisure that requires no training
(e.g., watching television); and project-based leisure that is a somewhat
complex, time-bound, creative undertaking (e.g., hosting a Halloween party).
According to Hartel, serious leisure and hobbies are interesting for information
science because they are based upon information acquisition and coalesced as
information-rich social worlds. Other scholars enacted research agendas about
casual leisure as a context for Web searching (Elsweiler, Wilson and Lunn,
2011), which is compelling due to its ubiquity.
The serious leisure perspective was discussed as, and demonstrated to be, a
strategic approach to information behaviour research at panels during the 2006
and 2009 ASIS&T annual meeting, the 2014 ISIC Conference, and most recently
a workshop at the 2016 iConference. The originator of the serious leisure
perspective, sociologist Robert Stebbins, participated in some of these events,
thereby generating an interdisciplinary enterprise. In addition, a special issue of
Library Trends (Fulton and Vondracek, 2009
) featured an integrative
statement by Robert Stebbins (discussed below) and case studies of virtual play
spaces, backpacking, coin collecting and genealogy. An edited book, Everyday
Information (Aspray and Hayes, 2011
), took an historical perspective on
information behaviour in leisure pursuits such as airline travel, fantasy sports
fandom, gourmet cooking, and collecting comic books. Given the groundswell of
attention to leisure, for the first time the Encyclopedia of library and
information sciences featured an article about leisure, 'Leisure and hobby
information and its users' (Hartel, 2010a
).
Substantial case studies of information behaviour in serious leisure began
appearing in premier journals of information science. For example, Prigoda and
McKenzie (2007
) used an ethnographic approach to document the
informational and social dynamics of a public library knitting group. Another
ethnography revealed the information needs of rubber duck collectors and
modelled the informational flows among the main participants in the hobby
social world (Lee and Trace, 2009
). The serious leisure pursuit of amateur
photography served as a setting to examine the use of photo sharing practices
on the Website Flickr (Cox, Clough and Marlow, 2008
).
As these exemplars illustrate, most studies of information behaviour in serious
leisure have been exploratory, naturalistic ethnographies followed by inductive
analysis and descriptive findings that are bound to their unique contexts.
Technically speaking, the research designs are idiographic and focused on
particular examples rather than nomothetic and pertaining to generic or
composite cases (Bates, 2005
). Unsurprisingly, the varied findings about
information behaviour therein have not been easy to synthesise and as of yet
there is no comprehensive theory of information behaviour in serious leisure.
Sociologist Robert Stebbins has also sought to characterise information
behaviour within leisure, providing an alternative perspective that is not
constrained by conventions of the information behaviour speciality. For
example, in The committed reader: reading for utility, pleasure, and fulfilment
in the twenty-first century (2012
), Stebbins identifies different kinds of reading
across three domains of everyday life: work, leisure, and non-work obligation.
Bridging the gap (Stebbins, 2009
), a lead article in a special issue of Library
Trends on leisure, introduces the serious leisure perspective as a conceptual
framework for understanding leisure and leisure activities. He notes the
important place of information in serious leisure and identifies two primary
types of information – fulfilment-related and social-world information – that
manifest variably across casual (see Elsweiler
et al., 2011), project-based, and
serious leisure.
According to Stebbins, fulfilment-related information exists in serious leisure
and many forms of project-based leisure. It contributes to the knowledge gained
over the course of the leisure career and involves 'reading books and articles,
examining websites, taking adult-education courses' for example (Stebbins,
2009, p. 628). In contrast, social-world information, which is present in
varying degrees across all three major forms of leisure, is gained by
participating in the social world and is more practical in nature. It includes
dates and places of upcoming events, contact information for services, and other
administrative or operational details that enable participation in the activity. In
comparing the two types of information, Stebbins writes, '[Social-world]
information is clearly important for participants in the activity, but it is,
however, generally less so than the kind of information related to effort
[fulfilment information]' (Stebbins, 2009
, p. 628). Stebbins's assertions about
these two types of information have yet to be established empirically.
On the one hand, Stebbins's observations of information behaviour are
pleasantly accessible without the technical vocabulary of information science,
and they describe information behaviour with a refreshing equanimity. On the
other hand, they are broad generalisations that would require further
development to be applied to the design of information systems, resources, or
services—admittedly the work of information professionals, not sociologists.
Stebbins's (2009
) orientation to types of information rather than information
behaviour brings to mind Dervin's (1983b
) critique of information research that
treats information as a brick or objective substance that exists separate from
any creator. Stebbins's emphasis on types of information is also at odds with
information behaviour research that places primary attention on human beings
and their behaviour or practices, not on information itself.
Part 2: Hektor's human information behaviour model and the serious
leisure perspective
Next, a conceptual analysis is performed to present a model of information
behaviour by Anders Hektor. In conceptual analysis, a whole is broken up into
its constituent parts for individual study; the process is based upon a close
reading of Hektor's work. This section also applies the method of
interdisciplinary translation work (Palmer and Neumann, 2002
), that
interprets and redefines concepts from outside fields; here, the serious leisure
perspective serves as a resource.
Hektor's (2001
) dissertation at the Department of Thematic Studies -
Technology and Social Change at Linkoping University, Sweden, entitled What's
the use: Internet and information behaviour in everyday life had two
objectives: 1.) To characterise how people use the Internet in relation to other
information systems in an everyday life context and 2.) to establish the
Internet's usefulness. The focus of this paper is limited to the model of
information behaviour that emerged from the first objective. It should be noted
that though Hektor's title and research design put primary emphasis on the
Internet, his study placed this singular information resource in the context of all
other information sources and systems of the day, resulting in a conception of
everyday life information behaviour that is more holistic than the title implies.
Despite sophisticated epistemological staging and innovative features, this work
and model have escaped the attention of information behaviour scholars and
are largely unused, with the exception of Savolainen (2008
), who incorporates
key elements into his theory of information practice. The objective of this paper
is to rescue this model from neglect, offer a critique, and encourage the
economical reuse of conceptual devices across information behaviour studies.
For several reasons, Hektor's (2001
) thesis was innovative. First, it was centred
on everyday life, that is non-work, or private aspects of people's lives (pp. 11-12)
at a time when studies of workplace or educational settings dominated the
literature, and it stands as a refreshing alternative to these foci even today.
Second, whereas most research of the era was based in the cognitive metatheory
oriented by individual experience, Hektor incorporated the immediate social
world of the actor, such as family and friends, to produce a model and findings
best characterised as microsocial. Third, another important innovation is that
existing research prioritised information seeking behaviour and the search for
information. Alternatively, Hektor widened the lens to include how information
is used, created, and shared—a substantially more complete, inclusive, and
realistic conception of information behaviour that suggests a more capable and
empowered human being. Finally, Hektor also anticipated the trend towards
information seeking in context. Drawing from the literature of time-geography,
he established major categories of everyday life activity as the immediate
context for information behaviour in daily living, namely: caring for oneself,
caring for others, household care, reflection and recreation, transportation,
procuring and preparing food, and gainful employment.
Hektor's research design had deductive and inductive elements. In a deductive
manner, he reviewed the information behaviour literature, focusing on its major
models. Building upon Taylor (1968
), Wilson (1981), Ellis (1989) and Kuhlthau
(1991
), Hektor established four elements that are likely to shape information
behaviour in everyday life: environment; information and communications
technology setting; information activity; and outcome and change. Due to space
limitations in this paper, the reader is pointed to Hektor's (2001
, pp. 60–67)
succinct explanations of these elements; here the focus is limited to one
element: information activity, that is 'the performing of a predominantly
mental process, which may include a physical process directed at
manipulation of information' (Hektor, 2001
, p. 311).
The inductive component of his research involved case studies of the
information behaviour of ten Swedish citizens. Hektor used judgement
sampling to hand pick ideal participants across a range of Internet experiences.
The ten individuals in the sample were all middle class but varied by age,
gender, family types, and employment. In an effort to characterise their
information behaviour, he employed two data gathering techniques. Subjects
participated in multiple semi-structured interviews about their information
behaviour and also kept a detailed diary of information behaviour for one week.
The data (interview transcripts and the diaries) were treated with analytical
induction to identify four broad categories of information behaviour and 8 more
specific types of information activity.
Diagrammatic models like Hektor's are a 'tentative ideational structure used as
a testing device' (Bates, 2005
, p. 2). They are the typical end products of
research using a cognitive perspective (Belkin, 1990
) or cognitive metatheory
(Talja, Tuominen and Savolainen, 2005
) that dominated information behaviour
research between approximately 1980-2005. Today such approaches and their
models are criticised by some as reductive (Day, 2011
) because they lack the
dimensionality and sensitivity to context associated with social constructionist
metatheory and qualitative or ethnographic methodology now in fashion. In
defence of such models, who can deny the explosion of theories and fruitful
applications that followed the models by Wilson (1997
, 1994, 1981), Ellis and
Haugan (1997
), and Bates (1989)? We seek the same positive outcome for the
serious leisure frontier.
From the literature of time-geography and the empirical data mentioned above,
Hektor elaborates the nature of everyday life and the information behaviour
therein. In his view, everyday life entails a sequence of many diverse activities
that are organised around projects. He states, 'Each activity in the unbroken
sequence of activities in everyday life relates to the circumstances of some
project' (Hektor, 2001
, p. 313). As one is engaged in a project, whether washing
the car or planning a vacation, problematic situations develop that arrest
forward progress. It is in the context of these projects and their problematic
situations that information behaviour and information activities reside and play
a functional role.