Title: A study on Chinese people's everyday life information seeking: taking a comparison between web and Weibo

Authors: Xiaoke Fang; Yongxian Xie

Addresses: Department of Arts and Science, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100191, China ' Department of Arts and Science, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100191, China

Abstract: People's everyday life information seeking (ELIS) is essential in the information behaviour research. Prior literatures tend to focus on specific groups of countries and less is known about Chinese people's life information seeking behaviour. In this paper, an online survey was conducted to capture the background and behaviour data from users who regularly use web and Weibo, the most influential Chinese language information acquired channels. The 'friend-of-a-friend' recruitment technique received a total of 136 responses, 129 of which were valid and analysed to generate both descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings indicate that much information can be obtained through the two channels; however the information types were different across gender and education levels on the web and Weibo. Notably, variables including web use history, web frequency, and Weibo use frequency had significant relationships with values on the two channels.

Keywords: everyday life information seeking; ELIS; web; Weibo; information; seeking modes; user characteristics; values; services; technology; management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2019.098209

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2019 Vol.25 No.2, pp.179 - 196

Received: 04 May 2017
Accepted: 23 Jul 2017
Published online: 06 Mar 2019 *

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