Information Seeking Behaviour in Online Environments: From Search to Sense-Making

Abstract

This paper thoroughly discusses the development of information seeking behaviour on the internet and how the inherently simple search activities have developed into sophisticated sense-making activity. The literature review is a synthesis of the traditional and modern information seeking models such as the berrypicking model by Bates, sense-making model by Dervin, search process of information by Marchionini, and the social search models of the emerging social search. It reviews empirical researches based on critical-incident surveys, search log analysis, and think aloud protocols. Information seeking has shifted away form system-oriented, query based models to user-oriented, models that acknowledge the social, cognitive and contextual aspect of information behaviour. The main advances are that social interactions have been incorporated throughout the search process, searching-to-browse has become a distinguishable activity, and it has been realized that various information objects (data versus documents) need diverging discovery strategies. Searching and sense-making are closely related and users are involved in repetitive foraging, evaluation, and knowledge construction. This paper presents a unified model between the history foundations and the trends of today, as well as in the methodological innovations that allow deeper insight into information behaviour. It claims that information systems should keep on evolving to facilitate all human sense-making process