Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
pollution, water transportation, and water storage. These may provide sources of
corroborating or conflicting information. There has been little examination into
the patterns of education created by such diverse sets of information sources.
Information provides empowerment through knowledge and through inclusion.
Through decisions about where and how to provide the public with information,
government agencies, non-profits, and other high-order decision making and
decision influencing bodies legitimate the concerns of particular subgroups of the
public by providing locally available and accessible information. The overlap in the
methods and locations organizations use to provide the public with water informa-
tion may create a metaphorical landscape that inadvertently acknowledges some
audiences and disenfranchises others. In this case, there are two benefit streams that
can be derived from receiving water information; improved familiarity with con-
tent, and the sense that your interests matter to larger decision making bodies.
3.2
Information as a Spatially Differentiated Good
Information is defined as data on the environment available to humans to evaluate,
interpret, synthesize, and remember (see McCreadie and Rice
1999
). This definition
allows for information use to be constrained or changed by the prior experiences of
users. Under this definition, information about the environment can be critical to
building knowledge, instigating or changing community action, and challenging
the structures of privilege (Hill
2003
; McCreadie and Rice
1999
; Gandy
1988
;
Palmquist
1992
). Access to information can lead to political and decision making
power (Doctor
1992
; Gandy
1988
,
1993
). Depending on how exposure to informa-
tion is distributed, it can compound or mitigate disparities in power associated with
socioeconomic class or degree of social organization (McCreadie and Rice
1999
).
The paucity of studies examining geography as a barrier to exposure to environ-
mental information is partially due to a tendency for evaluations of information
campaigns to focus on the outcomes of those campaigns, rather than the access to
information during those campaigns (Syme et al.
2004
; Noar
2006
). Conversely,
information seeking studies consider information exposure as an immeasurable
component of the context in which information seeking occurs (McCreadie and
Rice
1999
). The process of gaining knowledge through information campaigns
transcends organizational boundaries and relies on a series of exposures to infor-
mation over time, especially when information is presented in the absence of an
environmental crisis (Birkland
1997
). Affecting public awareness requires repeti-
tion until new information becomes an unconscious component of decision making
(Dagenbach et al.
1990
; Bargh and Chartrand
1999
).
Research on information seeking suggests that proximal sources of information
are most likely to be used across a variety of professional settings. Doctors (Menzel
and Katz
1955
), research and development scientists (Gerstberger and Allen
1968
),
and other groups (e.g. Rogers and Shoemaker
1971
; O'Reilly
1982
) have frequently
been found to rely on accessible forms of information over higher quality sources
