Date of Award

5-10-2026

Date Published

June 2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Information Science & Technology

Advisor(s)

Jasmina Tacheva

Second Advisor

Johannes Himmelreich

Keywords

capability approach;critical realism;emergence;information capability;information literacy;social realism

Abstract

Despite more than half a century of scholarship, the information literacy (IL) field continues to face unresolved tensions over its definition, theoretical foundations, disciplinary boundaries, and relationship to power and social structure. This dissertation argues that these tensions are not isolated problems but interconnected aporias that reveal constitutive features of the field, and that resolving them requires a philosophically grounded reconceptualization. The dissertation proceeds across three phases. Study A conducts a comprehensive critical review of over 600 publications in the IL literature, adopting an aporetic lens to identify six constitutive aporias: truth, knowledge and data, information behavior, genericism versus contextuality, ideology and political economy, and illiteracy. From these aporias, seven desiderata are derived as evaluative criteria for reconstruction. Study B develops two complementary reconstructions. Drawing on the Capability Approach (CA), Study B-1 proposes the Information Literacy as Capability (ILaC) framework, which moves IL beyond skills and situated practices by reconceptualizing it as a set of combined information capabilities—the substantive freedoms to realize informed ways of doing and being. ILaC distinguishes informational well-being from informational agency, proposes seven core information capabilities, and identifies the personal, social, environmental, and technological conversion factors through which information resources are transformed into valued functionings. Drawing on Critical Realism (CR), Study B-2 develops the Information, Technology/Media, Structure, and Agency (ITSA) framework, which provides the ontological and explanatory grounding that the CA requires. ITSA reconceptualizes IL as an emergent capability arising from the organized interrelations among four constitutive planes and distinguishes the constitution of information capability from its exercise as a causal power. Study C synthesizes the two reconstructions, demonstrates their compatibility and division of labor, and introduces social realism as a bounded supplement addressing the knowledge-information relationship. The synthesis resolves the seven desiderata, establishing that IL is best understood as an emergent capability for informed ways of doing and being, arising from the interplay of information, technology/media, social structure, and agency. The integrated reconceptualization provides a framework that is simultaneously normative, explanatory, and practically oriented, with implications for theory-building, research design, evaluation, pedagogy, policy, and equity. The title captures the dissertation’s triple meaning: to subject IL to a reality check, to theorize it as real, and to realize its potential by articulating the conditions under which all people may genuinely exercise their respective information capabilities.

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Open Access

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