Users’ Satisfaction
Agosto (2001) (as cited in Berryman, 2008) studied the decision making process of young Internet users. She argued that participants of her study were constrained by time and their own knowledge and she concluded that satisfaction of their needs was not the only element which made the participants stop their information seeking. “She reported additional stop rules, including physical discomfort and boredom, which caused participants to stop searching before they had found a website that was good enough to meet their information needs” (p. 4).
Zach (2005) wanted to find out what elements made arts administrators end information seeking processes: there were conflicts between time factors and a sense of comfort with the amount of information found. These participants used their own personal experience or expertise to find information and they would stop even when more information was known to be available.
Shenton and Dixon (2003) applied Kuhlthau’s information search model in a study with youngsters. This model consists of six phases: task initiation, topic selection, prefocus exploration, focus formulation, information collection and search closure. They state that in the stage of search closure:
| Youngsters draw their searches to an end, often as a result of lack of time or falling productivity. Pupils are likely to experience relief at completing the library search but, whilst some may feel satisfaction at its outcome, others are disappointed (p. 3). |
It is interesting to see how this issue is present on social networks, to analyze what kind of information needs are satisfied by social networks, how the users are satisfied with the information they have and how do they act in order to satisfy their information needs by using social networks.
Reflection