Nei-Ching Yeh
Professor, Department of Information and Communications, Shih Hsin University, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
E-mail: [email protected]
Keywords: Information Avoidance; Mainland Chinese Students; Social Norm; Social Support; World View
【Abstract】
Although acquiring information can provide numerous benefits, people often opt to remain ignorant.
Which means that people do not always seek information, and sometimes appear to take great pains to avoid it. However, the studies on people’s information avoidance behaviors are seldom. This study tries to understand why people avoid some piece of information, and examine what and why of information avoidance. And then, this study will discuss the relationship between information need and information avoidance. In‐depth interview are applied to collect empirical data in this study. 15 Chinese students in Taiwan were invited to join this study. This study arrived at the following findings.
Firstly, participants usually avoid discussing political issues with Taiwanese students. The social norms from parents and government regularize their information avoidance behaviors. Secondly, the participants experienced the social support from Taiwanese students without the influence of different political positions. Finally, the interactions between participants and Taiwanese students change the world views of participants.
【Long Abstract】
Introduction
Although acquiring information can provide numerous benefits, according to information behavior research, information is considered to be always needed in people’s daily life regardless of their work and non-work situation. The majority of people assume that information is good, meaningful, beneficial,
DOI: 10.6245/JLIS.201804_44(1).0003
and meeting their expectations; thus, people seek and use information to fulfill their needs. It looks like that people are generally curious and dislike uncertainty, which typically encourages them to look for relevant information. However, we find that people often opt to remain ignorant. Which means that people do not always seek information, and sometimes appear to take great pains to avoid it. Avoiding, neglecting, and denying information are common behavioral phenomena. Until now, only a few related studies on information avoidance have been conducted. Most of them have focused on the psychological aspect; no study has investigated information avoidance from a social perspective.
Therefore, using empirical data, this study aimed to provide insights into the phenomenon of information avoidance to gain a comprehensive understanding of this issue. In practice, the research results will help librarians and information professionals to understand the role of information avoidance in people’s information behavior and how to deal with this phenomenon. In recent years, the number of Chinese students studying in Taiwan has increased. Because the cultural and political difference between Chinese and Taiwanese students, we propose that Chinese students must chose to avoid some topics when discussing or interacting with Taiwanese students. Thus, they are the subjects of this study. Due to political and cultural differences, Chinese and Taiwanese students may have different values and social norms, which are reflected in their information avoidance behavior.
This study aims to provide a starting point for further understanding the role of social aspects in information avoidance behaviors. Specifically, Elfreda Chatman’s concepts of “social norm”, “world views” and “social support” provide a framework for analyzing how the norms and attitudes of Chinese students influence their information avoidance behaviors. Social norms allow for standards of ‘rightness’
and ‘wrongness’ in social appearances. It establishes a sense of the boundaries between a world and another world. Social norms may impact or limit information access in a community. World views constrain the members of one community are interested in or willing to pay attention to. Social support means that one is cared about and get assistance from other people. This study addressed the following questions: What are the reasons for Chinese students to study in Taiwan? What is the phenomenon of information avoidance when Chinese students interact with Taiwanese students? What are the contexts of both interaction and information avoidance of Chinese and Taiwanese students? What are the mediating factors influencing interactions between Chinese and Taiwanese students? What are the information avoidance behaviors of Chinese students when they interact with Taiwanese students? What are the results of information avoidance for Chinese students when they interact with Taiwanese students?
What is the impact of information avoidance on Chinese students when they interact with Taiwanese students?
Research Design
In this study, purposively sampling is applied to invite Chinese students to participate. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data from 15 Chinese students studying in 5 universities in Taiwan.
Grounded theory analysis of the data was conducted to examine the phenomenon of information avoidance and the reasons, influencing factors, and results of information avoidance when Chinese students interact with Taiwanese students.
Research Results and Discussion
The results revealed that after the Taiwanese government allowed Chinese exchange students to study in Taiwan, because of family support, common language, and their imagination about Taiwan from the media, literature works, textbooks, news and idol drama during their study in China. However, participants usually avoid discussing political issues with Taiwanese students. They felt that they are outsiders in Taiwan. They were dare to make friends and not open to discuss or interact with Taiwanese students. There was an invisible “political” wall (i.e., information avoidance) partly hindering the interpersonal relationship between Chinese and Taiwanese students. The avoidance of political issue was for the purpose of self-protections from hurt. It also strengthened the connections between Chinese students. However, this phenomenon did not affect the social support provided by Taiwanese students to Chinese students. For example, Taiwanese students liked to help Chinese students either in class or life.
And, Chinese and Taiwanese students could easily talk issues about daily life. The findings indicate that information avoidance results from social norms, personalities, ideological biases, world views, culture, language, norms established by the Chinese government and Chinese students’ parents, the Taiwanese government’s policies toward Chinese students, learning styles, and atmosphere in class. Information avoidance provides psychological protection to Chinese students in their interpersonal interactions; it leads to a consolidated relationship among Chinese students. The participants experienced the social support from Taiwanese students without the influence of different political positions. Almost all of the respondents mentioned that interaction with Taiwanese students had a more or less impact on them.
Interactions between Chinese and Taiwanese students encourage Chinese students to consider the possibility of challenging the norms, being themselves, and reconstruct values, changing the world views, allowing them to recognize the differences between them and Taiwanese students.
Conclusion and Suggestions
The study broadened the theoretical connotation of information avoidance. It explored people information avoidance behaviors from the social aspects, and found that concepts of small world, social
norms, and world concepts can be used to explain the information avoidance behaviors. The findings of this study, information avoidance phenomena originated from viewpoints and cultural differences (from world views and social norms), and political factors, can inspire the information services of libraries.
Political factors are more difficult to overcome, but the point of view is likely to change, the view changes the culture also changes. This study found that the values were different between Chinese and Taiwanese students which caused the information avoidance behaviors of Chinese students. The libraries can provide multicultural collections or living library services to create the space for dialogue, the social norms will be released, and world views may change. It will reduce phenomena of information avoidance. The limitation of this study is that, due to the social norms and teachings before coming into Taiwan, participants may not speak freely in the interview. But, researchers had explored their ideas from multiple dimensions to make up for this possible limitation.
【Romanization of references is offered in the paper.】