Social Search Using a Social Q&A Service: Seeking Information and Assessing Credibility.

Abstract

The development of various social technologies has provided people with abundant opportunities to interact with others when seeking information. Researchers have begun to examine such interactions in the context of online information seeking using a framework of social search. However, attention has mostly focused on interactions people have with existing contacts and acquaintances, rather than with unknown people. In addition, despite increased use of social question-answering (Q&A) services to seek information, prior research has focused more on those who answer questions than those who pose them. Finally, we know relatively little about how people assess the credibility of respondents or the information they provide during such online interactions. To address these gaps, this study uses a social search framework to examine people’s information-seeking behavior and credibility assessment practices when asking questions in a social Q&A setting, with emphasis on interactions with a large number of unknown people.

Seventy-eight participants were instructed to use Yahoo! Answers, the largest and most popular social Q&A service, for one week by posting questions of their own choosing while in their natural settings. A total of 406 questions was posted by participants, and in-depth interviews at the end of the week captured individual’s in situ experiences. Content analysis of interview data revealed that interacting with a large number of unknown people enabled information seekers to obtain personalized information tailored to their needs, while also allowing opportunities for more serendipitous discovery of information. People not only posted questions, but also used Yahoo! Answers to access its collection of accumulated questions and answers. In doing so, they sometimes searched for fun, not necessarily aiming to find answers to their questions. The study also identified characteristics of credibility assessment such as relativeness, crowd-assistededness, and transientness. Traditional constructs of credibility such as expertise and trustworthiness were examined, as well as two additional credibility constructs of pertinence and validity. These findings shed light on the positive effect of social interactions in social Q&A settings, and have implications for those studying information-seeking behavior and credibility assessment, as well as those seeking to improve the design of social Q&A services.