Information is all around us. It comes in many forms, comes from many sources, and serves a variety of purposes. Information exchange is necessary for society for education and management. Information as the most important component of modern life has certain properties that characterize it from a qualitative point of view. These properties depend on various factors and determine the possibilities of its use.
Relationship of the main properties of information
Thanks to the information exchange, the successful functioning of social relations is carried out: knowledge is accumulated, stored and distributed among members of society, and management takes place in various social structures. However, effective use of information is impossible without understanding its properties and the ability to use them.
Proper evaluation of incoming data is especially important in management and decision-making situations. Errors in management can lead to man-made disasters and social explosions. Therefore, in this area it is important to distinguish and correctly use the properties of information. They are presented in the table.
| Objectivity | Subjectivity |
| Completeness | Incompleteness |
| Reliability | Unreliability (falsity) |
| Relevance | Irrelevant (outdated information) |
| Adequacy (fit for purpose) | Inadequacy |
| Accessibility | Unavailable |
Different properties of information may in some cases overlap and complement each other, but this does not mean a complete correspondence between them. You need to be able to distinguish between seemingly similar properties when you have examples of objective information and adequate, reliable and objective, etc.
Because many properties are related, it is sometimes possible to make up for the lack of one with the redundancy of another.
Information and reality
In this context, objective and biased information is distinguished. The objectivity of information reflects how much this information correlates with reality.
Real reality is everything that exists in nature, regardless of the will or desire of man. For example, in the Middle Ages, most people preferred to believe that the earth was flat. However, neither the desires of the uneducated masses, nor the will of the omnipotent Church could cancel the objectively existing fact that the earthlythe ball has a completely different, much more complex shape.
Thus, information becomes biased when reflected in the individual consciousness and undergoes changes of varying degrees. These changes depend on the characteristics of a particular person: education, life experience, psychological characteristics of the individual.
What does "objective information" mean?
Objective information can only be called that which reflects the real picture of reality, regardless of anyone's personal opinion or assessment.
Why do people need it so much? The fact is that at this stage of human development, nothing gives such an accurate picture of the world around us as the most objective data. This is necessary both in the field of education and in the field of management. If there is no objectivity, then knowledge cannot be considered scientific, and management cannot be effective.
How to get objective information? For this purpose, serviceable and most accurate instruments, sensors and other measuring devices are used. When it comes to scientific information, it is important that it be reproducible. Reproducibility in science refers to the ability to obtain the same data in any other place and with other instruments. If the results of scientific research are reproducible, then such data are considered objective. Based on this criterion, physics, psychology and astronomy are objective sciences, while esotericism, parapsychology and astrology are not.
Examples of objective information
Scientific research data, indications of serviceable instruments can serve as such examples. A particularly clear picture is given by examples of objective and biased information, placed side by side for comparison. “It's warm outside” is biased information, which is a value judgment of an individual. At the same time, the information “on the street +20 oC” can be considered objective, since a measuring device, a thermometer, was used to obtain it. Similar examples are shown in the table below.
| Unobjective information | Objective information |
| The mountain is low. | The height of the mountain is 1300 m. |
| Bread is cheap. | One loaf of bread costs 20 rubles. |
| A sharp shooter. | Number of shooter hits: 8 out of 10. |
| This actress is the most beautiful. |
This actress was voted the most beautiful by readers of N magazine. |
Thus, subjective information carries an element of evaluation, while objective information simply reports the facts that exist in the real world. You can control the degree of objectivity, which is illustrated by the above examples of information. Any set of data can be objective and non-objective. It all depends on how accurately they convey the surrounding reality and how little they depend on someone's personal judgments or desires.
What gets in the wayobjectivity
For all the importance of this property of information, the objective component is almost never 100% achievable. This is due to the dual nature of any information. On the one hand, information exists and is stored in the form of data, which in themselves are material and objective. But on the other hand, when transmitting information, various information methods are used, which are subjective in nature, since they are directly related to sources and consumers of information. Thus, the information process is a two-fold phenomenon, and the resulting information transmitted can have a different degree of objectivity, depending on the predominance of one of the two components: methods and data.
How to improve the objectivity of information?
The main way is to increase the completeness of information. It is for this purpose that juries of creative and sports competitions, examination commissions and jury trials are created. The more independent arbitrators who are not connected with each other by information links, the higher the objectivity of the information - in this case, the assessment or the verdict.
Also, in order to obtain information that is closest to reality, it is necessary to use objective sources of information. When it comes to scientific research, preference should be given to results that have been confirmed by several scientists. If this is a media message, then first of all it is necessary to find the original source of information, and also be sure to compare how the same factpresented in various publications. Psychologists emphasize the advantage of text over videos: when reading, the ability to think critically is better preserved, which is the most important tool for obtaining objective data.
When objectivity is not needed
The above examples of objective information may suggest that a person always strives to obtain this kind of information about the world around him. But this is far from true. For example, the artistic perception of the world does not imply objectivity. Any creative work, to one degree or another, is the embodiment of the subjective personal view of the author. Of course, creations in the genre of realism represent a lot of objective details, but in general, the work remains artistic and cannot be put on a par with scientific research.
Creative works in the genre of cubism, symbolism, impressionism, primitivism, etc. are even less like examples of objective information, since they do not reflect the surrounding reality itself, but various approaches and methods of its representation. The authors of such works sacrifice objectivity in favor of expressiveness. Or, in the language of computer science, the data is put in second place, and the method of information transfer comes first.
Objectivity and reliability
Information may be distorted for various reasons. The degree of its undistortedness is called reliability. This property must be distinguished from objectivity. Of course, biased information cannot be considered reliable. Howeverunreliable information can be objective, provided that the degree of unreliability is precisely known. In modeling objects and phenomena, objective but unreliable information is used. Examples: mathematical and physical constants (number "pi", free fall acceleration), objects on maps, the exact number of particles, distances in space, etc. Scientists operate with all of the above data subject to errors. Thanks to this, information can be considered objective.
Objectivity and relevance
If the information corresponds to the current moment in time, then it is relevant. Information aging occurs at different rates and depends on its type. For example, data on an air traffic controller's monitor loses its relevance very quickly, and information about the structure of the earth's crust is much slower.
If we talk about objective and up-to-date information, examples can be found in transport schedules, weather reports, current news, currency quotes, traffic conditions, and similar information that is valuable at a particular moment.
Knowledge and understanding of the properties of information, as well as the ability to use them, is the key to the effectiveness of any activity in society.
