research-article

To search or to ask: the routing of information needs between traditional search engines and social networks

Authors:

Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch,

Meredith Ringel Morris,

Darren GergleAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

Pages 16 - 27

https://doi.org/10.1145/2531602.2531706

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

In status message question asking (SMQA), members of social networking sites make use of status messages to express information needs to friends and contacts. We present findings from a laboratory study that examined 82 participants' SMQA behaviors in the broader context of online information seeking. When given the option of using a search engine and/or a social network, participants leveraged SMQA for 20% of their information needs, most often posing a question to their network in addition to issuing a query. We show the important roles played by the specificity of the information need and the perceived audience of a given network on routing decisions. We then demonstrate that routing decisions have varied effects on participants' satisfaction, information value, and trust of outcomes. In addition to highlighting the complementary advantages and disadvantages of search and SMQA, our findings suggest that search engines can better address a meaningful portion of people's information needs by integrating SMQA capabilities into their systems.

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Cited By

Schoegje THardman LDe Vries APieters T(2024)Improving expert search effectiveness: Comparing ways to rank and present search resultsProceedings of the 2024 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3627508.3638296(56-65)Online publication date: 10-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627508.3638296
Soliman NKang HLatzke MBragg JChang JZhang AKarger D(2024)Mitigating Barriers to Public Social Interaction with Meronymous CommunicationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642241(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642241
Milton AMaestre JRoy AUmbach RChancellor S(2024)Seeking in Cycles: How Users Leverage Personal Information Ecosystems to Find Mental Health InformationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641894(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641894
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Index Terms

To search or to ask: the routing of information needs between traditional search engines and social networks
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

February 2014

1600 pages

ISBN:9781450325400

DOI:10.1145/2531602

General Chairs:
Susan Fussell
Cornell University
,
Wayne Lutters
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
,
Program Chairs:
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Madhu Reddy
Penn State University

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 15 February 2014

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CSCW'14: Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 15 - 19, 2014

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CSCW '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 134 of 497 submissions, 27%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627508.3638296
Soliman NKang HLatzke MBragg JChang JZhang AKarger D(2024)Mitigating Barriers to Public Social Interaction with Meronymous CommunicationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642241(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642241
Milton AMaestre JRoy AUmbach RChancellor S(2024)Seeking in Cycles: How Users Leverage Personal Information Ecosystems to Find Mental Health InformationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641894(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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