City Research Online

Abstract

Information encountering (IE) often occurs during active information-seeking and involves passively finding unsought, unexpected information that is subjectively considered interesting, useful or potentially useful. While the idealized IE process involves engaging with information after noticing it (e.g. by examining it, conducting follow-up seeking to determine usefulness, then using or sharing it), the process can be disrupted -resulting in missed opportunities for knowledge and insight creation. This study provides a detailed understanding of when and why the process can be disrupted. Think-aloud observations and Critical Incident Interviews were conducted with fifteen Web users, focusing on examining when they encountered information but did not engage with it. Factors that discouraged engagement and simultaneously encouraged participants to return to active, goal-directed information-seeking by disrupting the IE process were identified. These factors individually and collectively demonstrate IE can instigate a highly uncertain cost-benefit trade-off, sometimes resulting in encounterers being cautious by returning to ‘less risky’ active seeking. Design suggestions are made for reducing the uncertainty of deciding whether to engage with encountered information and making it easier to return to the active seeking task if disruption occurs.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Makri, S. and Buckley, L. (2019). Down the rabbit hole: Investigating disruption of the information encountering process. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24233. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
Subjects:	Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science > Human Computer Interaction Design
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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