Page 175 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

174 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

0.84 and significant at 0.01 level), and meanwhile, some occupations are not significant to others
(e.g., the correlation coefficient of company employees and farmers is 0.286 and no significant
relationship is found at level 0.05). This complex relationship reveals that if we assess information
divide through occupation, we will have to face some risks in that occupations which are always
composited by various social and individual factors. Thus, if we explaining the information divide
merely through occupations, the conclusions are questionable.

4 Discussion

4.1 Transforming of the theoretical perspective on information divide research

Digital divide and related researches have already confirmed that information sources existing
in people’s daily-life space can affect their information richness, so does this research. For
example, we found that due to shortage of organized information sources, information agents
tend to fall into information poverty. However, to explore information divide deeply, we still
need to pay attention to another very important question—whether and how information agents
bring information sources into their information source horizon. According to Information Source
Horizon theory, nothing but information sources were brought into the information agents’
information source horizon, otherwise information sources will have no effect on information
richness of individuals. However, whether or not individuals bring information sources into his/her
information source horizon depends on his/her personal interest and the judgment to the usability
or quality of information sources under certain circumstances. Thus analysis of information divide
should not be limited to objective environment where information agents are living in, but people’s
agent in their information practice for a comprehensive theoretical understanding of information
divide.
Actually, the contradiction of social structure and people’s agent is one of the theoretical gaps
in social science research and an obstacle for our understanding of living realistic world. For this
reason, Yu and Liu (2010) proposed that scholars among information divide community needed to
pay more attention to the interaction of structural and agent factors and how both of them affected
information poverty and information divide. Thus, scholars focusing on information divide research
need to steer their theoretical perspective to fill the gap. Our study developed a series evidence based
on information source horizon investigation and revealed the possibility and necessity of exploring
information divide from a comprehensive theoretical perspective.

4.2 Information Source Horizon under the constructivism context

Up until recent decades, constructivism provided new perspectives for social science research. In