Bożena Jaskowska
The aim of this paper is to present the ways in which young adults visually conceptualise information and to identify the visual metaphors that emerge in their drawings of this concept. The starting point is the assumption that information, as an abstract and multidimensional concept, is often understood through references to specific source domains rooted in spatial, bodily, social and cultural experience.
The study is embedded within an original multi-level model of metaphorical framing in information spaces, encompassing the cognitive, discursive and interface levels. The present analysis refers to the first of these, namely the cognitive level, at which metaphors reveal the ways in which users understand, organise and visualise information.
The study was conducted among students of the Institute of Information Sciences at UKEN, representing a group of young adults (N = 111), using a technique inspired by the iSquare procedure; participants produced a drawing answering the question of what information looks like, without any additional textual commentary. The empirical data were analysed in terms of the presence of visual metaphors, their source domains, and the properties of information highlighted.