“MAN DRUNKNAR I INFORMATION FAKTISKT, DET ÄR ETT JÄTTEPROBLEM”. En kvalitativ intervjustudie av hur forskare söker information i sitt forskningsarbete.

Abstract

To search for information today is, by many, seen as an easy and uncomplicated task. All you need is a digital device and the knowledge of the world is there for you to find and use. To search for information with a particular task or goal can however sometimes be challenging, for example to search for information with a scientific or research purpose. Is there a systematic way to do this? Is there a right and wrong? How do researchers actually search for information in their work as a researcher and what do they have to consider in this process? The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze how Nordic researchers in the field of media- and/or communicationstudies search for information in their work as a researcher. With “information” this study intends to focus on discussions around the type of instrumental information that researchers need to complete a research project, mostly how they search for literature and earlier relevant research in their field or other information related to the topic they are researching. The focus is searching for information with a specific purpose and not in everyday life. This study aims to contribute to the informationseeking research field, with a focus on social science researchers, and to take a closer look at how Ellis mapping and generalizing model shows up and expresses itself in a sample of how a few researchers describe their daily work. Outside of the scientific field, the study is relevant for society at large since a lot has happened when it comes to searching for information, both for researchers as well as for the public in general, since the Ellis model first came out in 1989. To better understand how people search for information in today's digital climate and what they have to adapt to, can help us to better our informationseeking technology, informationseeking tools and communication efforts based on how people actually use them. The study is written on assignment from Nordicom (https://nordicom.gu.se/en), a center for Nordic media research, with the intention that the results of the study will be a useful insight. Both into how their target audience searches for information in their work and hopefully this insight can be of value to better understand how communication efforts can fit the researchers behavior. Ellis behavioral informationseeking model, that originated in 1989 but has been used and tested many times in later research through different disciplines, consists of six different activities or characteristics of the behavioral informationseeking process: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring and extracting. These are not steps in the process but rather characteristics that show up in different ways in different researchers' behavior. The study examines its purpose: how do the researchers search for information, through Ellis’ model, and how is it expressed? through three research questions applied to the collected empirical data: Q1 How are the researchers’ information seeking behaviors expressed? Q2 What variations of information seeking activities do the respondents describe? Q3 What other aspects do the respondents perceive and describe when it comes to what they need to take into account in their information seeking today? The questions are formulated to, in a concrete way, answer the studys’ purpose by using Ellis’ model as a foundation to elaborate on through looking closer at the general model and how it is expressed. Trying to sort out how different researchers can fit in the same model, but practice different behaviors within the frame of the model. By looking closer at this a deeper understanding and a more comprehensive answer to the research question about how researchers seek information can be achieved. The study has been carried out through qualitative interviews with seven researchers from Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Three men and four women of different ages, seniority as researchers, different universities and various research areas in media- and/or communicationstudies. Ethical considerations have been made regarding the respondents anonymity and depiction of the respondents. They have furthermore been informed about the study and its purpose and consented to the interview being recorded. Other methods such as surveys and observations have been considered, qualitative interviews have however ultimately been deemed the most suitable to answer the study’s questions and purpose. The results of the study confirm previous studies on the topic and show that Ellis’ model (1989) still is relevant in describing how researchers search for information and literature in their work. The study additionally finds variations in how the activities among Ellis’ characteristics are expressed and new aspects that the respondents describe related to the characteristics are identified and described. Thoughts, perceived problems and other aspects related to the information seeking process are presented. A deeper insight into what the information seeking process and behavior looks like, with Ellis’ model as a framework is what the study has thus resulted in. Recommendations for continued studies on this topic are made.