Context and Norm Dependence

With so much information to choose from to present to computer users, there must be a degree of recognition of the context in which the information is chosen and presented on both sides of the information transfer. Firstly, both the user and the provider must understand the context in which the information is presented, such as, for example, that there is a set of laws governing the country that requires some sort of legal contract to be established before they can install and use a piece of software^3.8. Both sides need to understand that the sort of information that is actually dealt with in a communicative transaction depends on what the user wants to do, or what they are capable of doing (Manson & O'Neill 2007, p. 41).

Norm dependence is a much more basic criterion for successful communication. The sorts of norms required here are the sorts of norms required for any successful communication. One such example is trust in the informer not to mislead or give irrelevant information, but the norms required could be any other epistemic or ethical norms. These are required because if, in the case of trust, an audience is suspicious or mistrusting, they are not able to be informed (Manson & O'Neill 2007, p. 42). For example, if a Website misleads an audience into thinking that the software they provide will be advertisement-free, where in reality it has advertisements, this will make the audience sceptical of the veracity of the truth-claims the Website makes about its software, and thus will be harder to properly inform, even if later information is true.