CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Dervin, B. (1989). Users as research inventions: How research categories perpetuate inequities. Journal of Communication, 38 (3), 216-232. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ 400 429). Reprinted in: B. Dervin & L. Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin (pp. 47-60). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
© Hampton Press and Brenda Dervin (2003), reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press (1989).

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ABSTRACT:
In this article, Dervin examines categories traditionally used for categorizing users of information/communication systems by social scientists and marketing researchers, as well as system designers. She emphasizes that traditional categories which focus on such attributes as demographic, personality, and life-style characteristics involve applying a static framework to humans not well suited to understanding information/communication behaviors. She outlines three significant difficulties posed by traditional categorizations: (a) the reification of systems that create inevitable disparities between those that “have” information and those that “have-not,” (b) the lack of a foundation to discuss the resolution of this disparity, and (c) the subsequent relegation of communication technology possibilities to existing design functions.

By addressing each of these difficulties in turn, Dervin presents an option to redesign these traditional categories by viewing the world of the user through an actor’s perspective via a process-oriented—not traditionally static—standpoint. Using this approach (which draws on Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology), Dervin presents a discussion of alternative categories of communication/information systems users and ties in a number of research applications. Specific policy issues relating to deregulation, privatization, and the vertical/horizontal integration of communication industries are also addressed.

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