Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification

ABSTRACT

Even when the timing, sequence, and manner of notification are instrumentally inconsequential, how one conveys information affects the meaning of the telling. This article introduces the concepts of "notification norms" and the "information order," showing how the former constrain the behavior of nodes in social networks as well as enabling manipulation of the relationships that comprise those networks. "Notification" is defined as information transmission motivated by role obligations and notification norms as social rules that govern such transmission. These rules produce patterns of information dissemination different from what individual volition would yield and from what technology makes possible. The capacity to wield a socially sanctioned repertoire of notification rules is a learned competence. Competent notifiers must also understand the local epistemological ecology—the distribution and trajectory of information, as well as the projects, concerns, and priorities of one's fellows. This study of notification introduces the broader concept of "the information order" and is a first step in the project of a sociology of information.