Social information can be defined as:

Information about subjective experience—such as thoughts, intentions, emotions, and shared meaning—that arises through human interaction and exists independently of any formal technical system, data protocol, or computational process. It is embedded in social contexts, shaped by cultural norms, interpersonal relationships, and lived experience, and often transmitted through informal channels such as conversation, gesture, or shared understanding.

This definition distinguishes social information from machine-readable or protocol-bound data by emphasizing its origin in human subjectivity and its reliance on social and cultural context rather than technical encoding.