Conceptual Curiosity: Sense(un)making

Across disciplines, sensemaking is a theoretical and methodological research program, over forty years in development, that has been treated as a framework for understanding how humans behaviorally respond to external information sources and interpret to construct and actualize actionable outcomes; however, sensemaking is an interlinking process that does not operate in singularity–behaviorally or actionably–it is neurobiological (autonomous drive), cognitive (perceptual and predictive), and psychological (congruency in meaning). This paper enlarges the conceptual framework for studying sensemaking and redefines it by addressing what sensemaking is, does, and needs. At the core of this conversation is addressing the absence of knowledge and scholarship on sense(un)making, often mentioned in literature as the opposite of sensemaking, but remarkably, without definition or explanation, assuming knowing the first process, e.g., sensemaking, negates defining and studying the latter. Sense(un)making, a conceptual idea explored in this paper, is activated when sensemaking, predictive processing, and meaningmaking are no longer working asynchronously because new information has challenged an aspect of meaning in life (i.e., congruency, purpose, and significance). The implications of this paper’s ideas lie in its contributions to conversations, research, and future directions in information behavior and sensemaking research. The research questions are simple: What is sensemaking? What is sense(un)making?