Desperately Seeking Information in Information Systems Research Thirty Sixth International Conference on Information Systems, Fort Worth 2015 1 Desperately Seeking Information in Information Systems Research Research-in-Progress Michelle Carter University of Washington The Information School Mary Gates Hall 330G Seattle, WA 98195 mscarter@uw.edu Stacie Petter Baylor University Hankamer School of Business One Bear Place #98005 Waco, TX 76798 Stacie_Petter@baylor.edu Adriane B. Randolph Kennesaw State University Michael J. Coles College of Business 560 Parliament Garden Way, NW, MD 0405 Kennesaw, GA 30144 arandolph@kennesaw.edu Abstract The information systems (IS) research community has long engaged in dialogue as to the core of IS and the discipline’s legitimacy within business schools. Our concern is that efforts to protect the discipline by theorizing the IT artifact may have diverted attention from conceptualizing information as the dependent variable, through which we assess the effectiveness of our true core subject matter—information systems. To evaluate this supposition, this study employs a text-mining software, Leximancer v.4, to analyze the content of editorials published in AIS “basket of six” journals between 2002 and 2014. Preliminary results hint at subtle changes in themes, as well as the meaning and relevance of “information” over time. Once analysis is complete, we will draw on the findings to suggest potential opportunities and directions for IS research that treat information (the end) as seriously as its means (the IT artifact). Keywords: IT artifact, formats, instructions, length, conference publications brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)