RESEARCH FOUNDATIONS
2 Understanding How Information Is Made
Kathleen DeLaurenti and Andrea I. Copland
The Information Life Cycle
Most people in the 21st century consume information online through social media, news outlets, or pop-up advertisements. While information is more accessible than at any other point in human history, the way information is organized is highly dependent on historical approaches to how that information was created and shared. We call the model of how information is created and disseminated the information life cycle.
The information life cycle places information we consume on a timeline with milestones such as “Day of” or “Months after,” in temporal relation to an event. The information life cycle helps us discover what kind of information and research are available about any given event over time. Where a piece of information occurs in the information life cycle shapes how we think of it as evidence or potential research material.
The graphic below identifies milestones along the information life cycle.
Here is the most important thing to know about the information life cycle: WHEN we encounter a piece of information has a significant influence on the quality and quantity of information available. If we are hunting for information sources about the Grammy Awards in 2024 we will find a variety of primary sources on social media and in newspapers and magazines. If we are hunting for information about how scholars have analyzed the Grammy Awards and their impact on the music industry, we should seek out secondary sources in articles or books written and published by scholars. However, we might not expect scholars to cover the most recent awards ceremonies because of the time it takes for secondary research to be conducted and published. Tertiary sources like Wikipedia will summarize important facts an scholarship that has been published about the Grammy Awards over time. The information life cycle reflects how information sharing and technology work together (or sometimes not!) to create and disseminate new knowledge.
It is also important to know that the information life cycle follows Western European publishing traditions. For example, oral and nonwritten traditions of information sharing are completely absent, ignoring the ways that non-Western cultures may share information differently.
The information life cycle seems to be chronologically linear, moving from days to weeks to months to years. However, you may notice encyclopedias listed at the end of the information life cycle and wonder, “Why would it take 5 to 10 years for something to appear in an encyclopedia when Wikipedia is updated every day?”
The answer is that traditional encyclopedias are managed by large teams of editors who solicit experts to provide summaries of the scholarly landscape for readers. Some encyclopedias, like Oxford Music Online, focus on presenting expert perspectives from one academic discipline. The writing, editing, and publishing proces