The information community I chose is those people facing the reality of climate change. It is composed of communities most impacted by climate change, the groups that advocate for them, and the producers of relevant climate information, e.g., scientists and science communicators.
One of the models which applies to the information needs and behavior of this community is Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP), developed by Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999). It models risk information seeking by considering a set of key variables, including how the individual perceives a particular hazard, their affective response (dread, worry), and their community’s expectations around being well-informed.
To the extent the individual perceives an information gap, they will seek out relevant information based on how they regard various media channels. They also consider their own information gathering capabilities, such as how easily the information can be found and understood (Griffin, et al, p. S232).
The RISP model has been applied in a variety of contexts, including information seeking around personal health and environmental risks. RISP borrows elements from prior models including the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM). From TPB it takes the concepts of norms and perceived behavior control. From HSM it takes the ideas of heuristic and systematic information processing and the sufficiency principle (Kahlor, 2007, p. 417–419).
The distinction between heuristic and systematic information processing is the latter requires more cognitive effort and resources. The sufficiency principle says people will expend this effort to gain sufficient confidence they have closed their perceived knowledge gap and this, "motivates a person to devote more cognitive effort to processing messages about the behavior, e.g., evaluating the message critically, thinking about the message, integrating message- based information with what one already knows" (Griffin, et al, p. S237).
A diagram showing some of the influences on the RISP model. Click for full version.
Kahlor (2007) further develops this model, which she calls augmented RISP. She retains some core elements, but draws upon additional concepts from TPB. For instance, she considers the individual’s attitude toward the information seeking behavior itself, such as whether it is effective and the subjective experience of searching. She also adds a component prior to the actual seeking behavior, which is the intent to seek (p. 419).
She goes on to describe results from empirical testing of the model using an online survey of 828 respondents. She concludes that the perceived importance of climate risk and its personal health impact increases the feeling of worry. This worry, along with others’ expectations for being informed, in turn increases the perceived information gap. The greater the gap, the more likely they are to express an intent to seek information (p. 429–430). A relationship between intent and actual information seeking behavior, however, is left for a future study.
These models, Kahlor shows, are effective at predicting some variance in risk information seeking intent. However, every map leaves something out, otherwise it would be the territory. One modification she makes is the collapsing of per channel beliefs in RISP to a more general consideration of individual attitudes towards information seeking (p. 420). In a world where the Internet affords so much information seeking, considering attitudes towards different channels would seem worthwhile. After all, where the individual seeks information from is as important as the fact of them seeking information at all, especially given the proliferation of misinformation on such a highly politicized topic as climate change. Perhaps this feature re-appears in future models.
References
Griffin, R. J., Dunwoody, S., & Neuwirth, K. (1999). Proposed model of the relationship of risk information seeking and processing to the development of preventive behaviors. Environmental Research, 80(2), S230–S245. https://doi.org/10.1006/enrs.1998.3940
Kahlor, L. A. (2007). An augmented risk information seeking model: The case of global warming. Media Psychology, 10(3), 414–435. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260701532971