Social Information Research: Volume 5

Information we receive from and create together with our social networks is becoming increasingly important. Social information has in many ways a great impact on our information behaviour and there are many possible angles and layers in studying social aspects in information science. This book presents some of these angles. This book is relevant for various actors in the library and information science field and will be useful for researchers, educators and practitioners while coordinating empirical research on social information and by providing an overview of some of the present research about social information.

The purpose of this book is to collect current research representing different aspects of social information with emphasis on the new innovations supporting contemporary information behavior. To begin with, we need to define what we mean by social information in general and in the area of information science in particular. It is interesting to notice that social information is a concept used and researched in many different disciplines. Besides information science, the concept of social information has been studied in biology, psychology, and sociology among other disciplines.

Purpose – To develop a broader understanding of sense-making as an embodied process of social construction.

Methodology/approach – Extended conversational interviews (Seidman, 1991) were undertaken with 35 prominent theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom exploring the events and relationships that shaped their relationship with Shakespeare and his work. Inductive analysis was carried out inspired by a variety of theoretical lenses, including Dervin's Sense-Making and Foucauldian discourse analysis.

Findings – Participants’ sense-making was quintessentially social in that it was not only linked to their social connections and relationships with other members of the company but also a process of social construction drawing on a variety of disparate, and sometimes contradictory, established discourses. In contrast to prevailing approaches in information behaviour, the findings emphasise the importance of understanding sense-making in a more holistic way: as a process involving emotions as well as rationality, bodies as well as minds.

Research implications – Information researchers need to adopt a more holistic approach to understanding the relationship between people and information: to recognise that atomistic approaches focussing on the purposive information seeking of individuals reflect an implicit systems-centrism rather than people's lived experience.

Practical implications – Information researchers and practitioners need to consider the social affective and embodied nature of sense-making and consider, for example the ways in which online social networking sites build on centuries-old communal knowledge-sharing practices.

Originality/value of paper – The study extends our understanding of the importance of affect and embodiment for people's sense-making, while at the same time demonstrating that they, like language, are the products of social construction, both the object and generator of discourse.

Purpose – To present detailed examples of the social construction of understandings, exploring interplay between social and individual sense making.

Methodology/approach – A form of ethnomethodological discourse analysis is undertaken using text from online discussions groups for people with kidney failure. Sense making is theorised using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology (1999) as a starting point. Chatman's Theory of Normative Behaviour (2000) and Pettigrew's Information Grounds (1999) are considered for their potential to theorise social impacts on individual understandings, while a practice theoretic approach (Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b) illuminates dynamics between social and individual sense making.

Findings – Local understandings developed out of repetition with gradual modification of ideas. Meanwhile, generic information such as facts was usually contextualised by descriptions of lived experiences. In this way, specifics were emphasised rather than generalities. However, the detailed, non-prescriptive commentaries provided by individuals gathered into usefully loose (non-specific) fields of possibilities.

Research implications – Information and knowledge manifest as transient and customised. This suggests a need for caution if researchers conceive people as having stable ‘knowledge structures’ which can be mapped by research, and it raises questions about durable incarnations of information.

Practical implications – People must produce flexible understandings particular to their situation. This requires time, reiteration and access to contributions from a range of sources. Provision of generic information during one-off interactions is only a first step towards support of these larger needs.

Originality/value of paper – Extends relational conceptions of information and verb-based metaphors for sense making, by proposing sense making, information and knowledge as transient and customised.

Purpose – This chapter will discuss empirical results on how attitudes toward group work and the prospect of publishing in wikis influence students’ work in collaborative knowledge construction. It will also explore how writing for an audience can be used in information literacy education.

Methodology – Data were collected by pre- and post-questionnaires and group interviews from two 8-week courses in an upper secondary school. In total, 58 students were involved. The quantitative data was analyzed by frequency and correlation analysis. Content analysis was applied to transcribed interviews.

Findings – Group work experiences carried over from one context to another. Ways to undertake group work influenced the learning experience. Cooperation – sharing tasks to be undertaken individually – tended to be a negative experience while working closely together enhanced learning. Wikis were mainly used as platforms for combining texts written individually by the students. The prospect of publishing on public Wikipedia had a considerably stronger influence on students’ motivation than publishing a text for fellow classmates on the school wiki.

Practical implications – Wiki-publishing enables an emphasis on information use as part of information literacy instruction, where students learn to adapt their texts toward their audiences. Careful instruction is, however, needed for the use of social media tools and collaborative processes, in order for them to serve their purpose.

Originality – The study showed how group work attitude in general influence future group work experiences. It also demonstrated the influence of publishing texts on wikis or Wikipedia on students’ motivation.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore whether and how social tagging can be useful in an information web site for cancer patients and their relatives.

Methodology/approach – Three studies have been carried out in order to investigate the research questions. First, we reviewed and analyzed literature about cancer patients’ information needs and seeking behavior, and about social tagging and patient terminology. Second, we analyzed tags applied to blog postings at Blogomkraeft.dk, a blog site at the Danish information web site Cancer.dk. The tags were compared with the formal browsing structure of Cancer.dk. Results from the two studies were used to develop a prototype for social tagging at Cancer.dk. Thus third, we evaluated the prototype in a usability study.

Findings – We found that tags have the potential to describe and provide access to web site content from the users’ perspective and language use. Social tags may be a means to bridge between scientific viewpoints and terminology and everyday problems and vocabulary. Tags at Blogomkraeft.dk are mainly factual, often detailed, and do not cover as many functions as tags in more general bookmarking systems. An important finding is that some tags seemed to add to and supplement the content instead of factually describing the content of a blog posting. The usability test showed that our test persons liked the tagging feature.

Social implications – Tagging features give the public an opportunity to apply their own terms to documents, reflecting their own model of the current topic. Tags may furthermore function as colloquial lead-in terms from users’ search formulations at search engines such as Google to the domain-specific, tailored cancer web site.

Originality/value – Unlike most research on social tagging so far, we investigate tagging in a domain-specific setting, how tags can improve the interaction and communication between layman users and domain experts in an information web site within health care.

Purpose – Twitter was introduced in 2006, and in the ensuing five years it has struggled in its path to gain legitimacy. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that although the format is often ephemeral and seemingly inane, there are in fact many useful means for researchers to utilize the medium to analyze trends such as breaking news, the cultural zeitgeist, and field specific trends.

Design/methodology/approach – Through a literature review and controlled searching, this chapter will show the most commonly used methods of researching with Twitter, and how to gainfully use Twitter within such a limited context of 140 characters.

Research limitations – Due to the fact that Twitter is a dynamic and constantly changing web site, research on this subject is limited by the fact that findings could change or be under different parameters by the time of publication. This chapter seeks to take a long form approach by trying to discuss parts of Twitter that should remain stable and remain valuable in the future.

Originality/value – This chapter provides insight into new models of research that librarians can utilize to better aide patrons.

Purpose – To examine the connection between social media and games, and to analyze information phenomena relating to them.

Design/methodology/approach – A survey of existing research is combined with results from two studies.

Findings – Players use game-related social media as an expansion of play and as a substitute of it, while avoiding information overload in the form of finding out so much that it damages the play experience.

Research limitations/implications – The number of potential game-related social media sources is so high that this chapter mostly presents just the early steps toward researching them further.

Practical implications – The chapter reveals the tight connection that has been formed between games and social media, showing that to properly research one, a look at also the other is necessary.

Originality/value – The chapter presents initial guidelines on where to start in researching game-related social media, an area that has so far seen very little research from both game studies and information scholars.

Purpose – To investigate the potential of the semantic web as a source of information about social networks within academia, as well as more widely for webometric investigations.

Methodology – The functionality of five semantic search engines were analyzed to determine their suitability for webometric investigations, with the most suitable, Sindice.com, then being used to investigate the use of Friend of a Friend (FOAF) within UK academic web space.

Findings – In comparison to the web of documents, the semantic web is still a small part of online content. Even the well-established FOAF social vocabulary was not found on the majority of academic web sites, let alone being found to represent the majority of academics, and provided little indication of social networks between institutions. Nonetheless from a webometric perspective the study does show the potential of a semantic web for a far wider range of webometric investigations, and demonstrates that, unlike the traditional web, there are currently useful tools available.

Implications – Having established that there are appropriate tools available for webometric investigations of the semantic web, and acknowledging the potential of the semantic web for far more detailed webometric investigations, there is a need for additional studies to determine the specific strengths and limitations of the tools that are available, and investigate those areas where webometric investigations can provide the most useful insights.

Originality/value – The research applies established webometric methodologies to the social semantic web, demonstrating the potential of a whole new area for future webometric investigation.

Purpose – The web provides scholars with mechanisms to publish new types of outputs, including videos. Little is known about which scholarly videos are successful, however, and whether their impact can be measured to give appropriate credit to their creators. This article examines online academic videos to discover which types are popular and whether view counts could be used to judge their value.

Methodology/approach – The study uses a content analysis of YouTube videos tweeted by academics: one random sample and one popular sample.

Findings – The results show that the most popular videos produced by identifiable academics are those aimed at a general audience and which are edited rather than having a simple format. It seems that the audience for typical academic videos is so small that video production in most cases cannot be justified in terms of viewer numbers alone.

Practical implications – For the typical scholar, videos should be produced for niche audiences to support other activities rather than as an end in themselves. For dissemination videos, in contrast, view counts can be used as a good indicator of failure or popularity, although translating popularity into impact is not straightforward.

Purpose – This research examines the nexus of two important phenomena: established information practices and the uptake of social media tools to facilitate or extend these practices. It aims to provide a conceptual account of how social media is embedded in the practices of the information sector.

Methodology – The research design is based on qualitative multiple case studies and grounded theory following Eisenhardt (1989). It uses an information practice as a unit of analysis and collects data as written and spoken descriptions of practice.

Findings – Existing knowledge and expertise in the use of social media is nascent and disparate and often available only as anecdote. As a result of this research, it is captured and conceptualized and a theoretical frame for social media use in information work emerges – a deeper understanding ensues.

Originality/value – This research uses a practice perspective to focus on the activity involved in social media adoption to support information work. In theorising across multiple descriptions of information practices, this research provides a steadying influence in information environments that may feel obligation to embrace the global phenomena of social media. Clarifying guidance for purposeful information work will benefit the information profession and advance its various practices.

Purpose – As researchers need partners to collaborate with, this study aims to provide author recommendation for academic researchers for potential collaboration, conference planning, and compilation of scientific working groups with the help of social information. Hereby the chapter analyzes and compares different similarity metrics in information and computer science.

Methodology/approach – The study uses data from the multidiscipline information services Web of Science and Scopus as well as the social bookmarking service CiteULike to measure author similarity and recommend researchers to unique target researchers. The similarity approach is based on author co-citation, bibliographic coupling of authors and collaborative filtering methods. The developed clusters and graphs are then evaluated by these target researchers.

Findings – The analysis shows, for example, that different methods for social recommendation complement each other and that the researchers evaluated user- and tag-based data from a social bookmarking system positively.

Research limitations/implications – The present study, providing author recommendation for six target physicists, is supposed to be a starting point for further approaches on social academic author recommendation.

Practical implications – The chapter investigates in recommendation methods and similarity algorithm models as basis for an implementation of a social recommendation system for researchers in academics and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Originality/value of chapter – The comparison of different similarity measurements and the user evaluation provide new insights into the construction of social data mining and the investigation of personalized recommendation.

Marit Kristine Ådland is a Ph.D. student at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science. Her research interests and activity is within knowledge organization, information behavior, information retrieval, and information architecture. Her current research explores users’ tags and tagging behavior in the field of cancer information. She teaches classification and indexing to students training in librarianship.