Olof Sundin

Lund University | LU · Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences

Purpose The aim of the study is to understand how meaning is assigned to online searching by viewing it as a mundane, yet often invisible, activity of everyday life and an integrated part of various social practices. Design/methodology/approach Searching is investigated with a sociomaterial approach with a starting point in information searching a...

Invisible Search and Online Search Engines considers the use of search engines in contemporary everyday life and the challenges this poses for media and information literacy. Looking for mediated information is mostly done online and arbitrated by the various tools and devices that people carry with them on a daily basis. Because of this, search en...

The ability of citizens to establish the credibility of information and information sources through critical assessment is often emphasized as essential for the upholding of a democratic society and for people's health and safety. Drawing on material-discursive conceptualizations, the article asks, how does critical assessment of information and in...

Purpose The article makes an empirical and conceptual contribution to understanding the temporalities of information literacies. The paper aims to identify different ways in which anticipation of certain outcomes shapes strategies and tactics for engagement with algorithmic information intermediaries. The paper suggests that, given the dominance of...

This opinion piece takes Google's response to the so‐called COVID‐19 infodemic, as a starting point to argue for the need to consider societal relevance as a complement to other types of relevance. The authors maintain that if information science wants to be a discipline at the forefront of research on relevance, search engines, and their use, then...

This explorative study investigates the emergence of gray zone markets from search engines amidst the global expansion of online markets. With the analytical approach of infrastructural inversion, we examine how the search infrastructure constructs access to a gray zone market including both authorized online pharmacies and unauthorized vendors. Us...

Samtiden präglas av sociala mediers flöden med allt från kakrecept till konspira- tionsteorier, algoritmernas enorma makt och samtidigt osynlighet, och en fram- växande generativ AI:s kapacitet att sprida lögner, påhittade bilder och videor. Kan källkritik, en metod som en gång utvecklats inom historievetenskapen, vara lösningen på de många utmanin...

Social media, search engines, and recommendation systems provide a constant stream of data that shapes our knowledge, beliefs and decisions. We are constantly presented with content from a variety of sources, often without context. This content gets amalgamated into new constellations in the feeds, lists and streams we encounter (and sometime curat...

The overall aim of this article is to contribute to a research‐based understanding of the increasing invisibility of web search engines in society and to discussions about the potential impact of this invisibility. It examines how search engine use and online search activities are represented in national and regional reports on internet habits and...

In: Hicks, A., Lloyd, A., & Pilerot, O. (eds), Information Literacy through Theory, 2023, Facet Publishing.

Book review of Anna-Maija Multas (2022) New health information literacies. A nexus analytical study, Acta universitatis Ouluensis B Humaniora 192, University of Oulu, Oulu

Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy contributes to ongoing conversations about control of knowledge and different ways of knowing. It does so by analysing why media and information literacy (MIL) is proposed as a solution for addressing the current information crisis. Questioning why MIL is commonly believed to wield such power, the book t...

Wikis are often considered to be the core platform of peer production. This chapter delineates their most central design principles, history and affordances. Wikis are described as content management systems that allow for flexible collaboration without a defined content owner or leader. Users can modify the content and structure of documents direc...

Research report

Antologi för Nationell satsning på medie- och informationskunnighet och det demokratiska samtalet (Ku 2018:04)

In this conceptual paper theory of infrastructure is combined with one of situated learning, with a focus on search and search engines. The aim of the paper is to make a theoretical contribution to the information literacy research field by discussing theoretical contradictions as well as strengths when combining the two theoretical perspectives. S...

This paper reports a study of pupils’ experiences of media and information literacy education in five Swedish schools by answering the following overarching question, what roles do the teaching of information seeking and critical assessment of information play for pupils in their school-work as well as in their everyday life? Pupils in ninth grade...

This paper presents a theory-driven discussion on the role of facts in society, couched between a brief historical overview and a discussion of the contemporary situation, exemplified in particular by openly available web-based fact services. Implications for the conceptualisation of information literacy – and in particular information literacy in...

The chapter focuses on the notion of critical evaluation of information, which is an important part of media and information literacy (MIL). The concepts frictions of relevance and infrastructural meaning-making are introduced to shed light on the information infrastructure's significance for MIL in today's digital media ecology. Furthermore, the c...

Vad är algoritmer och vad gör de till så viktiga komponenter i plattformssamhället? (Intervju med Jutta Haider och Olof Sundin av Jonas Andersson Schwarz)

https://medium.com/big-data-small-meaning-and-global-discourses/war-on-terrorism-data-a-research-note-4834890aae14#.qncro6n3j

Introduction. In contemporary society increased access to and dependence on digital technology has produced richer possibilities for outsourcing memory to external systems, an issue that becomes especially tangible in educational settings. The aim of this paper is to make visible how the changing relations between searching for and memorizing infor...

Purpose – This paper investigates the experiences of school teachers of supporting pupils and their apprehensions of how pupils search and assess information when search engines have become a technology of literacy in schools. By situating technologies of literacy as sociomaterial the purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss these experience...

The study is a scoping review of 80 research articles in LIS and related fields (2004-2014) on the use of social network sites by researchers. The results show that social network sites are used as part of scholarly life, yet with disciplinary differences. It is also shown that the area lacks methodological, theoretical and empirical coherence and...

This article explores the ways in which abilities to search information and evaluate sources, and critical understanding of these activities are addressed in the Swedish curriculum for compulsory school, preschool classes and recreation centres (Lgr11). The article is based on a qualitative textual analysis of Lgr11 and grounded in a socio-material...

Artikeln undersöker människors förhållningssätt till uppslagsverk och encyklopedier i ett livshistoriskt perspektiv under en period när encyklopedier har genomgått dramatiska förändringar. En frå- gelista som skickats till fasta så kallade meddelare knutna till Folklivsarkivet i Lund har använts som metod. Svaren har analyserats med hjälp av posthu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how students construct narratives of themselves as information seekers in a school context where their descriptions of their information activities are assessed and graded. Design/methodology/approach – Blog posts on credibility judgements written by 28 students at a Swedish upper secondary school...

This paper presents a qualitative thematic analysis of reader comments posted in connection to a series of articles published after Encyclopaedia Britannica's announcement to forego its print edition. It shows how ideas of what information is, are entangled with ideas of what a certain medium is and does. Two research questions guide the analysis:...

Link: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4383 This paper aims at making visible new orders of encyclopaedic knowledge by means of an ethnographic study carried out during eight months at the editorial office of the leading commercial encyclopaedia in Sweden, Nationalencyklopedin (NE). The investigation is framed in a socio–technic...

This paper presents on-going research on the production of knowledge in contemporary professional digital encyclopaedias. By adopting a theoretical perspective that considers the interplay of humans, non-humans and practices at the same level, it develops further a socio-technical perspective on knowledge production. Methodologically, the project i...

Participatory media are commonly used in today's society for a variety of purposes. The credibility associated with these media is sometimes contested, and their acceptance into school practices has been debated. Focus group interviews with teachers and librarians in upper secondary schools in Sweden are used to investigate conceptions and experien...

Artikelns syfte är att skapa en ökad förståelse för deutmaningar som uppstår när man i klassrumsprak-tiker skapar mening åt informationskompetens i all-mänhet och i synnerhet åt trovärdighet. En kvalitativstudie har genomförts i två svenska gymnasieklassermed elever från andra året på samhällsvetenskap-ligt program. Artikeln ger en inblick i de utm...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore how trustworthy knowledge claims in Wikipedia are constructed by focusing on the everyday practices of Wikipedia editors. The paper seeks to focus particularly on the role of references to external sources for the stabilisation of knowledge in Wikipedia. Design/methodology/approach – The study is inspir...

Purpose The article concerns information literacies in an environment characterised by the two partly competing and contradictory cultures of print and digital. The aim of the paper is to provide a better understanding of the ways in which students assess the credibility of sources they use in school, with a particular interest in how they treat pa...

The article draws together studies on encyclopaedic expressions throughout history with Foucault's notion of heterotopia, i.e. actually existing utopias or ‘other’, particular spaces that exist besides society's regular spaces and which work according to their own rules. It explores how we can understand contemporary online encyclopaedias, specific...

Introduction. The question of credibility in participatory information environments, particularly Wikipedia, has been much debated. This paper investigates how editors on Swedish Wikipedia consider credibility when they edit and read Wikipedia articles. Method. The study builds on interviews with 11 editors on Swedish Wikipedia, supported by a docu...

This article explores how we can understand contemporary participatory online encyclopaedic expressions, particularly Wikipedia, in their traditional role as continuation of the Enlightenment ideal, as well as in the distinctly different space of the Internet. Firstly we position these encyclopaedias in a historical tradition. Secondly, we assign t...

No Abstract. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63075/1/1450450120_ftp.pdf

Introduction. We aim to create an in-depth understanding of how pupils in upper secondary school negotiate the credibility and authority of information as part of their practices of learning. Particular focus is on the use of user-created resources, such as Wikipedia, where authorship is collective and/or hard to determine. Method. An ethnographic...

Wikipedia is continually being scrutinised for the quality of its content. The question addressed in this paper concerns which notions of information, of collaborative knowledge creation, of authority and of the role of the expert are drawn on when information control in WP is discussed. This is done by focusing on the arguments made in the debates...

Epistemology – the study of knowledge and knowing – is of central concern to information science (Budd, 2001; Dick, 2002; Hjørland, 2002). Jesse Shera, who coined the term social epistemology with Margaret Egan, suggested that information science is intimately connected to the “production, flow, integration and consumption of all forms of communica...

This article investigates negotiations of librarians' expertise in relation to information literacy at the micro-level, specifically in the domain of nursing education. A qualitaitve empirical framework is employed. The study draws on 18 semi-structured interviews, 16 with Swedish nursing students, one with a librarian and one with a nursing profes...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how different approaches to information literacy, such as are mediated through web‐based tutorials, are used as tools in negotiating the information‐seeking expertise of university librarians. Design/methodology/approach A textual analysis of 31 web‐based Scandinavian tutorials for information literacy...

This keynote concerns social aspects of information seeking and use in professional life and how these are made explicit in information practices. In particular, the keynote focuses on how professionals' activities in relation to information artefacts, as well as the artefacts in themselves, are socially constructed in context-bound practices. Argu...

This article contributes to discourse-oriented, information-seeking research by showing how discourses, from a neopragmatist perspective, can be explored as tools that people employ when they actively engage in information practices in varied social contexts. A study of nurses and the nursing profession in Sweden is used as an empirical example of...

Underutilization of Web-based subscription databases and the importance of promoting them have been recognized in previous research. To determine the factors affecting user acceptance of Web-based subscription databases, this study tests an integrated ...

The purpose of this paper is to make visible different approaches to university librarians’ professional expertise such as they are mediated through user information seeking education. The empirical basis of the study consists of an analysis of 31 web-based tutorials in information literacy accessible via Scandinavian university libraries’ web-site...

Introduction. The article argues for a closer association between information seeking research and the practices of teaching information seeking. Findings are presented from a research project on information seeking, didactics and learning (IDOL) investigating librarians' and teachers' experiences of teaching information seeking. Method. Thirteen t...

Introduction. The article argues for a closer association between information seeking research and the practices of teaching information seeking. Findings are presented from a research project on information seeking, didactics and learning (IDOL) investigating librarians' and teachers' experiences of teaching information seeking. Method. Thirteen...

This article investigates web-based user education, considering it as a forum where the shaping of librarians’ professional expertise is negotiated. By conveying a profession’s knowledge on the Web, it is possible to define and emphasise those “problems” that the profession is striving to solve. The aim of the article is to present various approach...

Purpose To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool. Design/methodology/approach Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positi...

An important question in Library and Information Science (LIS) is for what purpose information is sought; information seeking is not carried out for its own sake but to achieve an objective that lies beyond the practice of information seeking itself. Therefore, instrumentality could be seen as an overarching principle in the LIS field. Three diffe...

Artiklar, seminarier och konferenser om informationskompe- tens sköljer över oss i de nordiska länderna sedan några år tillbaka. Budskapet är, att biblioteken har en viktig roll i brukar- nas lärandeprocesser genom att bidra till att utveckla dessa brukares informationskompetens. Men biblioteks eller bibliotekariers förhål- lningssätt till informat...

Introduction. The aim of the study reported is to examine user discourses identified in the Swedish public library field. The following questions are posed: What user discourses can be found and what characterises them? How are users categorised and what does this categorisation imply? The departure point in this paper is that the ways users are ca...

This article investigates web-based user education, considering it as a forum where the shaping of librarians' professional expertise is negotiated. By conveying a profession's knowledge on the Web, it is possible to define and emphasise those "problems" that the profession is striving to solve. The aim of the article is to present various approach...

The present article is an analytical review of studies about user education (in both traditional and web-based form)aimed primarily at college and university students, and of studies about professionals' information seeking. A theoretical framework discussing the concepts of information, profession and professional identity form a critical backgrou...

The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of the domain analytical approach by using tools from the theory of professions. This is accomplished by showing how the symbolic values of professional information can create, sustain, and alter professional interests, power relations, and occupational identities. By taking this approach,...

Introduction The focus for this paper is how information literacy is taught and practiced in Swedish upper secondary schools. Special attention is paid to the critical evaluation of the credibility and the authority of documents, which has been identified as a particularly difficult topic for students (Alexandersson & Limberg, 2003; Hilligoss & Rie...

Extra t.p. with thesis statement and English abstract inserted. Thesis (doctoral)--Högskolan i Borås, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (p. 262-281)