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Tracing the linkages of world views, information handling, and communications vehicles

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Abstract

Too often, advocates of domain-specific belief systems overlook the implications of their beliefs when choosing communications technologies and strategies, although they rarely overlook the importance of content. This essay argues that both environmentalism and sustainable agriculture, as systems of belief, favor certain strategies of generating and distributing information over others; that is, the essay argues that both the content and form of communications imply certain value preferences, hence both are subject to value-relevant choices. An additional purpose of the essay is to set a context for this special edition of Agriculture and Human Values. Collectively the articles in this edition discuss a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to questions connected to information generation, access to information and information technologies, and the value systems conveyed by communications vehicles, including what is conveyed and different discussions of what should be conveyed. This essay looks at the importance of four sets of domain-specific value systems (environmentalism, sustainable agriculture, and the conventionalism counters to both of these) for two different sets of value systems connected to information generation, and further discusses each of these value sets in connection to choosing asymmetrical or symmetrical communications. It is hoped that this discussion of the flow of information, from generation to distribution, will provide a context for reading the edition as a whole.

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Authors
  1. Ann Reisner
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Ann Reisner is an assistant professor of agricultural communications and a fellow at the Program for the Study of Cultural Values and Ethics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her primary interest area is agriculture, communications, and values and she has written numerous research articles in this area. She is also co-editor of this special issue on value issues in agricultural communications.

The essay benefited greatly from discussions with Gerry Walter and Suzanne Wilson.

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Reisner, A. Tracing the linkages of world views, information handling, and communications vehicles. Agric Hum Values 9, 4–16 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217622

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