The Labor of Informational Democracy: A Library and Information Science Framework for Evaluating the Democratic Potential in Socially- Generated Information

Authors

Jonathan Cope, College of Staten Island, CUNYFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter or Section

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

This essay outlines a framework that LIS can use to analyze socially-generated information. The proposed evaluative framework involves three democratic horizons of analysis: the level of access, the level of production, and the level of communicative speech. This inquiry synthesizes the political economy of communication/librarianship, autonomist Marxist insights about the dematerialization of labor in late capitalism, and the concerns of contemporary democratic theory. The essay concludes with a set of proposals for LIS to pursue research and policies that use a critical theoretical framework linking the realm of production (i.e., labor) with communicative democracy.

Comments

This work was originally published in "Progressive community action: Critical theory and social justice in library and information science," edited by Mehra, B., & In Rioux, K.