What motivates the online news browser? News item selection in a social information seeking scenario

We investigated how online news consumers select content in an explicitly social information seeking scenario. Participants (n=30) were asked to browse an online news website and select three items as part of a social task scenario. This paper focuses on participants' evaluation of the content they selected based on their interest,, intellectual curiosity, and likelihood to share ratings, and their motivations for choosing each item as articulated in a post-task interview. We drew upon Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), which categorizes motivations to interact with media as surveillance, social utility, personal identity, entertainment, and habit, to ground our structured content analysis of the interviews. Findings indicate that surveillance and social utility motivations dominated participants' news selections, and that when seeking information to share with others, personal interest and curiosity play an important role in selection, but that a wide range of socio-situational factors and goals also come into play. Participants articulated nuanced considerations of how information could be used to forge connections with others, establish a positive social environment, and make an impression on others. Information seeking as a means of satisfying human social needs is an area ripe for exploration in information behaviour research. INTRODUCTION In today's society, the ways we interact socially are evolving. Through ubiquitous technologies such as mobile devices and social media, we are constantly connected to other people – both those we know on a personal level and those we know only virtually. This enhanced connectivity increases our awareness of other people – their likes, interests, and activities – and boosts our ability to instantly share and receive information from others. In such environments, information seeking and sharing serve social as well as informational purposes.