Information Horizons Mapping

It is the set of information resources — people, documents, websites, tools, institutions — that an individual perceives as available and relevant within a particular context or situation. Sonnenwald's theory holds that people do not weigh every conceivable source but operate within a perceived horizon shaped by their situation, social network and setting. The same person has different horizons in different situations. The mapping method makes this horizon visible by asking participants to draw and explain the sources they would (and would not) consult for a specific information need.

The researcher first fixes a concrete information-seeking situation, then asks the participant to draw themselves and place around them the sources they would turn to, indicating how close, central or connected each is. A think-aloud and interview probe why each source is included or excluded and how they relate. Analysis reads the spatial structure — closer and more central sources signal stronger preference and use — together with the participant's stated reasoning, and individual maps can be aggregated to compare source horizons across roles or social groups within the same context.

A source-use survey hands participants a predefined list of sources and asks how often they use each, imposing the researcher's categories and capturing only frequency. Horizon mapping instead lets participants define their own information landscape for a real situation, showing which sources come to mind, how they are prioritized spatially, which are deliberately excluded, and the reasoning behind all of this. It thus captures perception, preference, relationships and avoidance in context — a richer, more situated picture than a frequency checklist can provide, at the cost of being more labor-intensive and smaller in scale.