The Information Animal: Humans, Technology and the Competition for Reality
TURKISH LIBRARIANSHIP, cilt.40, sa.3, ss.586-593, 2026 (ESCI, TRDizin)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Kitap İncelemesi
- Cilt numarası: 40 Sayı: 3
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.24146/tk.1982335
- Dergi Adı: TURKISH LIBRARIANSHIP
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Directory of Open Access Journals, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA), TR DİZİN (ULAKBİM), Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.586-593
- Hatay Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This study aims to evaluate Alicia Wanlesss' book, *The Information Animal: Humans, Technology and the Competition for Reality*, from an information and document management perspective. This qualitative book review critically analyzes the books' core concepts and arguments within the framework of information ecology, information behavior, and information literacy literature. The review concludes that the book demonstrates that misinformation and disinformation are not solely products of the digital age, but that similar information struggles have occurred throughout human history with the emergence of various communication technologies. Furthermore, it conceptualizes the information environment as a dynamic ecosystem composed of interactions among people, technologies, institutions, and ideas, explaining information disorder from a structural and socio-technical perspective. The work shows that information disorder and disinformation should be evaluated within historical, social, and ecological contexts, beyond content-centric approaches, and offers an important theoretical framework for understanding access to reliable information, trust in information, and digital information environments. This study is unique because it is one of the first reviews in Turkish literature to evaluate The Information Animal from an information and document management perspective, and because it discusses, within an interdisciplinary framework, the contributions of the information ecology approach developed in the book to studies on information behavior, digital information literacy, and information disorder.