New Modes of Information Behavior Emerging from the social web

 Isto Huvila, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Hazel Hall, Napier University, Scotland

Mari Kronqvist-Berg, Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Outi Nivakoski, Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Helena Franke, University of Boras and Goteborg University, Sweden

Moderator: Gunilla Widen-Wulff, Abo Adakemi University, Sweden

This was a great session overall, considering how Web 2.0 has changed information behaviors in organizations, or has the potential to do so.  The biggest takeaway for me was a statement made by Dr. Hazel Hall, Director, Centre for Social Informatics, School of Computing Edinburgh Napier University.  She had done a study of corporate environments (including the public sector).  She found that microblogging (Twitter) was the least used of new Web 2.0 tools, and had the lowest perceived usefulness. Yet, when she listed out how different Web 2.0 tools facilitated communication, she found that microblogging actually does combine many of the features of others, and perhaps we sell microblogging short because of the widespread mockery of Twitter. For example: 

-        Microblogging offers social networking, but unlike other SNS,  asymmetric relationships are possible.  This could be useful in organizations because organizational relationships are often asymmetrical.  Everyone can follow the CEO or Dean, but perhaps he/she does not follow everyone else.

-        Microblogging shares the "brief and to the point" benefits of IM.

-         Microblogging shares with wikis the public nature of conversations, which encourages collaborative building of new knowledge, and legitimate peripheral participation

-         Microblogs provide easy linking to other resources, like blogs.

-          Finally, Microblogs share features with CONVERSATION:

o   Meta knowledge

o   Problem reformulation

o   Validation

o   Legitimization of ideas

o   For examples see search.twitter.com/search?q=#ASIST09