My perspective
I believe that Buckland categorized the uses of information in an effective manner in order to emphasize the role of information as a physical object.
In another publication, Information as Discursive Construct[1], the author, Lai Ma, revises Buckland's article and she discusses another system of categorizing the value of information that is proposed by Hamid Ekbia and Tom Evans in Regimes of Information[2] :
Information as measurement data - Data that is processed and assembled into a specific form.
Information as commodity - The monetary value of information.
Information as documentation - Information as texts or documents.
Information as message - The influence of media and who provided the information.
Information as anecdote - Experience from family, friends and neighbors.
Information as intuition - Information from internal feelings and individual preferences.
This categorization leads to several important questions: should certain types of information be considered more valuable than others? If so, who decides and why is it more valuable?
I believe that depending on a context, one type of information is more valuable than another.
For example, during a trial, information as measurement data (evidence found at the crime scene) is the most valuable. In this case, the lawyers and detectives decide which type of information is most valuable in order to win the trial.
By the end of Buckland's discussion, he states that basically anything can be denominated information but the consensus of the community is what makes something informative.
However this consensus is driven by the history, culture and social construct of a society, as stated by Ma, Ebkia and Evans in their articles.
So can something be considered information in one country, but not in another?
Can a country's history drive the community to regard something as information?
Can different social rankings (poor vs. rich) have different views on what is informative?
According to Buckland, something is only informative if a group of individuals decided that it is. In a way, this is true because things can be informative but not exactly valid. For example, before scientific explanations, natural phenomena was considered to be caused by gods but today we know that this is due to certain environmental factors. Both things could be considered informative at different points in time but today the second information is what holds true. So as our knowledge of the universe evolves and changes, what we consider information evolves and changes as well.
