Full Citation
Title: Measuring Information Appetite: The Desire to Spend Time with Information, Engaging in Consumption, Dissemination, and Creation of Information for Personal Reasons
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2016
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Abstract: This dissertation stemmed from the question about when individuals are satisfied with information. It attempts to answer the question from the perspective of information appetite, i.e. the desire to spend time with information, expressed in the amount of time spent engaging in personal information practices (PIPs: consumption, dissemination, and creation of information for personal reasons). Studied here are the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) dataset collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and a survey dataset collected on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). This dissertation presents analyses and a discussion of findings of the ATUS dataset, a description of the method of collecting the MTurk dataset, and analyses and a discussion of findings of the MTurk dataset. Two propositions about information appetite (IA) were made, and both were supported by the datasets. The first proposition was that individuals have varying degrees of IA, as measured by the amount of time spent engaging in PIPs, which was supported by the ATUS and the MTurk data. The second proposition was that an individual has different IAs for different topical areas, which was supported by the MTurk data. The study identified a small group of people who spent much time for PIPs, namely a high IA group. In addition to PIPs, the high IA group spent more time with their interested topics than the regular group did. As for what affects spending time for PIPs, having free time (e.g. not working/not having a job, or evenings and weekends) was found to be an important factor. The dissertation ends with a discussion of implications, limitations and suggestions for future studies.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Hwang, Soo-Yeon
Institution: Rutgers University
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Publisher Location: New Brunswick, New Jersey
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Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - ATUS
Topics: Methodology and Data Collection, Other
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