research-article

The Effect of Social and Physical Detachment on Information Need

Authors:

Fernando DiazAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), Volume 31, Issue 1

Article No.: 4, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/2414782.2414786

Published: 01 January 2013 Publication History

Abstract

The information need of users and the documents which answer this need are frequently contingent on the different characteristics of users. This is especially evident during natural disasters, such as earthquakes and violent weather incidents, which create a strong transient information need. In this article, we investigate how the information need of users, as expressed by their queries, is affected by their physical detachment, as estimated by their physical location in relation to that of the event, and by their social detachment, as quantified by the number of their acquaintances who may be affected by the event. Drawing on large-scale data from ten major events, we show that social and physical detachment levels of users are a major influence on their search engine queries. We demonstrate how knowing social and physical detachment levels can assist in improving retrieval for two applications: identifying search queries related to events and ranking results in response to event-related queries. We find that the average precision in identifying relevant search queries improves by approximately 18%, and that the average precision of ranking that uses detachment information improves by 10%. Using both types of detachment achieved a larger gain in performance than each of them separately.

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Cited By

Lan RCampana FTardivo DCatherine JVergnes JHadj-Saïd M(2021)Relationship between internet research data of oral neoplasms and public health programs in the European UnionBMC Oral Health10.1186/s12903-021-02022-z21:1Online publication date: 17-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-02022-z
Li LTian JZhang QZhou J(2021)Influence of content and creator characteristics on sharing disaster-related information on social mediaInformation & Management10.1016/j.im.2021.10348958:5(103489)Online publication date: Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2021.103489
Li LZhang QTian JWang H(2018)Characterizing information propagation patterns in emergenciesInternational Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.00838:1(34-41)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.008
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Index Terms

The Effect of Social and Physical Detachment on Information Need
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Information retrieval query processing
  2. World Wide Web
    1. Web interfaces
      1. Browsers

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Information Systems

ACM Transactions on Information Systems Volume 31, Issue 1

January 2013

163 pages

ISSN:1046-8188

EISSN:1558-2868

DOI:10.1145/2414782

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 01 January 2013

Accepted: 01 November 2012

Revised: 01 October 2012

Received: 01 April 2012

Published in TOIS Volume 31, Issue 1

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Cited By

Lan RCampana FTardivo DCatherine JVergnes JHadj-Saïd M(2021)Relationship between internet research data of oral neoplasms and public health programs in the European UnionBMC Oral Health10.1186/s12903-021-02022-z21:1Online publication date: 17-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-021-02022-z
Li LTian JZhang QZhou J(2021)Influence of content and creator characteristics on sharing disaster-related information on social mediaInformation & Management10.1016/j.im.2021.10348958:5(103489)Online publication date: Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2021.103489
Li LZhang QTian JWang H(2018)Characterizing information propagation patterns in emergenciesInternational Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.00838:1(34-41)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.008
Yom-Tov EFischer SBarrett RCummings RAgichtein EGabrilovich E(2017)The Werther Effect RevisitedProceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion10.1145/3041021.3051118(1561-1566)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3041021.3051118
Diaz FGamon MHofman JKıcıman ERothschild D(2016)Online and Social Media Data As an Imperfect Continuous Panel SurveyPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.014540611:1(e0145406)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2016
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145406
Yom-Tov EBorsa DHayward AMcKendry RCox I(2015)Automatic Identification of Web-Based Risk Markers for Health EventsJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/jmir.408217:1(e29)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2015
https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4082
Yom-Tov EKostkova PGrasso F(2015)Ebola data from the InternetProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Digital Health 201510.1145/2750511.2750512(115-119)Online publication date: 18-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2750511.2750512

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