This paper examines how information culture (IC) and data culture (DC) have been conceptualized and mobilized in library and information science (LIS), and clarifies the relational logics through which the two constructs intersect rather than compete.
A critical synthesis was conducted of 127 publications (2015–2025). The corpus was identified via searches across Scopus and Web of Science, complemented by AIS eLibrary, ACM Digital Library and the ASIS&T Digital Library. Studies were screened for conceptual centrality of IC/DC and appraised for theoretical relevance rather than methodological uniformity.
The synthesis shows that IC and DC are frequently positioned through substitutionist and technocratic framings, where DC is treated as either an upgraded successor to IC or as a managerial instrument detached from institutional meaning-making. Across LIS debates, IC foregrounds sensemaking, values and organizational memory, whereas DC foregrounds data practices, governance and infrastructural coordination. Treating the two as co-evolving cultural infrastructures helps reframe their relationship as reciprocal shaping across symbolic, organizational and socio-technical layers, enabling a more coherent map of convergences, tensions and boundary conditions.
By positioning IC and DC as partially overlapping yet analytically distinct cultural formations, the paper offers a conceptual alternative to substitutionist and technocratic narratives and articulates an agenda for future cross-cultural and interdisciplinary LIS research.
