Life in the round
This theory draws on Chatman's study of female prisoners at a maximum-security prison in the northeastern United States. [2] After observing inmates both during and outside of their interactions with the prison's professional employees, [3] Chatman theorizes that the women live "in the round," that is,"within an acceptable degree of approximation and imprecision." [4] Instead of seeking information about the outside world,over which they have no control,prisoners avoid gathering this type of information;in order to survive,they place importance on "daily living patterns,relationships,and issues that come within the prison environment" over which they can exercise agency. [5] In this way,inmates display defensive information seeking behavior.
Inmates form a "small world," a closed community where private opinion yields to a shared reality its accompanying information-seeking behavior. [2] Social norms established by inmates determine the importance or triviality of a piece of information;as such,information that affects prisoners in an immediate way (such as illness while medical staff are off-duty) gain importance,while information about the outside world becomes trivial. [6] [5] Chatman concludes that life in the round disfavors information seeking behavior,as there is no need to search for outside information. Prisoners "are not part of the world [...] being defined by outsiders" [5] and because inmates do not need additional information to participate fully in their own reality,they do not seek it out. [5]
Chatman saw that these disincentives to information seeking could become cultural norms in small worlds,and that these cultural norms could produce what she labeled information poverty,by perpetuating the avoidance of information that would be useful. [6] [7]
