Information seeking behaviour of aspiring undergraduates on social media: who are they interacting with?

Lara Dodd, Gobinda Chowdhury*, Morgan Harvey, Geoff Walton

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution book

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper we consider how aspiring undergraduates are utilising social media to meet their information needs during their application and transition into university. In particular, we ask who some of the prominent online actors are during this period. We want to know whether hopeful students are consulting social sources online, and if so, who these conversations are with, or, about. We use term frequency analysis to process a large sample (n = 494,180) of "tweets" (social media messages from Twitter) to determine who these main actors are. Our analyses provide insights into who students are interacting with during different stages of the decision-making process and, perhaps more importantly, who they are mostly failing to engage with. This leads us to a number of potentially useful conclusions and recommendations with regard to young people's information behaviour on social media in the context of university admission.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDigital Libraries
Subtitle of host publicationData, Information, and Knowledge for Digital Lives - 19th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2017, Proceedings
EditorsSally Jo Cunningham, Songphan Choemprayong, Fabio Crestani
Place of PublicationCham, Switzerland
PublisherSpringer-Verlag
Pages245-255
Number of pages11
ISBN (Print)9783319702315
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Nov 2017
Event19th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2017 - Bangkok, Thailand
Duration: 13 Nov 201715 Nov 2017

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume10647 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference19th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2017
Country/TerritoryThailand
CityBangkok
Period13/11/1715/11/17

Keywords

  • adolescents
  • information-seeking behaviour
  • social media
  • teenagers
  • twitter

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