Information-Seeking Patterns of Visitors to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum: Sense-Making or Sense-Disorientation

Largely, public opinion suggests that memorials and monuments across the United States and around the world are well received and appreciated by those who visit them. This is thought to be particularly true for the family members of those the memorial is built for. Yet, little research has examined systematically the process of information-seeking amongst visitors to such memorials.;This study uses Dervin's Sense-Making theory and method to investigate information seeking among visitors to the National 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City, New York. Support from Weick's Sense-Making theory and various theories in collective and public memory are also used. The aim of this research is to investigate: (a) How visitors to the 9/11 Memorial define any situations of being stopped from movement they may experience during their time spent at the Memorial; (b) What gaps visitors to the 9/11 Memorial experience that prevent them from understanding the role of the Memorial in their situation; and, (c) As gaps are bridged or not bridged, how visitors to the 9/11 Memorial see the Memorial as helping or hurting them in their information seeking process.;The sample for this qualitative, narrative research was drawn from 27 visitors to the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. The study was conducted through in-depth Sense-Making interviews with each participant. These interviews focused on moments during their visit to the Memorial where the respondents felt confused, concerned, and unsure about their experience. During these moments, specific aspects of the information-seeking process are explored, including: the situations which respondents sought information, the types of questions respondents asked in these situations, and the ways in which respondents used the answers they constructed.;The results provide rich detail of the respondents' experiences at the Memorial and indicate that whether or not participants experienced personal or collective loss largely impacted their information-seeking process. Their narratives are analyzed using Dervin's Sense-Making triangle of situations-gaps-uses to understand their situations, desired movement, when they felt blocked from movement, and how they bridged gaps in movement. The potential benefits of the Sense-Making approach for research and the development of memorials are also discussed.