Habermas and information science in Brazil

philosopher's theoretical influences on researchers

Abstract

Recognizing the influence of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in the field of Information Science, this research examines how such influence is found and characterized in the scientific production of researchers with Productivity Scholarships from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). To highlight the philosopher’s influence on these researchers and their articles indexed in the Referential Database of Articles of Periodicals in Information Science (Brapci), the study maps the production of the most prominent and recurring authors among Habermas's citants, focusing on the influences of the philosopher's reflections on them; the main source vehicles; the most prominent themes; the institutions and the distribution of these data in the 69 articles published between 1987 and 2019. To this end, it applies metric procedures and employs content analysis, starting by a full reading of the indexed articles, arranged and presented in their relational elements, highlighting the intensity of variables such as frequency concentration, cited works, journals, institutions, and themes. Firstly, the PQ fellows linked to the field of Information Science were identified and characterized according to their specificities. Then, the corpus of the researchers' journal articles was organized, and the authors were matched to the Habermasian themes and issues in their texts, contextualizing them according to a multidimensional representative structure. The results point to conducive conditions for a critical approach to the knowledge production process, the consequence of which is the development of alternatives offered to the researcher in his or her daily university life, using as instruments the CNPq's database of researchers in the field of Information Science and Brapci. They also identify Technique and Science as Ideology (TCI), Theory of Communicative Action (TAC), Structural Change of the Public Sphere (MEEP), Knowledge and Interest (CEI), and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (CMAC) as those cited by the widest range of researchers, relating them to the issues discussed in the analyzed corpus. The most expressive thematic configurations are related to the Theory of Communicative Action, as this theory has the greatest repercussion in the construction of knowledge in the field, evidencing, as one of the most controversial issues, the understanding that the present, according to Habermas, goes beyond partial modernity, not yet overcome. The author's influence in the production of citers prevails on topics such as the informational public sphere and the importance of access to information in the construction of citizenship, the performance of institutions in information management, and their role as mediators of public, active information, in the transparency of State actions and in the consolidation of democracy. The study concludes by suggesting the main issues drawn from the initial results, such as the dynamics surrounding public spheres, predicated on civil society and on the formation of opinion and will in parliamentary complexes, as well as on the decision-making practice of institutional settings, as a form of Habermasian exercise of deliberative politics.