On Being Epistemologists of Others: Conceptualizing Strategies and Accounting for the Process of Social Information Seeking via Computer-Mediated Communication
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Peterson, Ashley
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 28, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Andrew High, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Denise Solomon, Major Field Member
S. Shyam Sundar, Outside Unit & Field Member
Andrew High, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Brian Manata, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- social information
social goals
information seeking
social information seeking
information quality
interpersonal communication
computer-mediated communication
affordances - Abstract:
- This dissertation investigates social information seeking (IS), or how people learn about each other, which is a popular domain of research in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Two issues facing current scholarship in this area stem from continued use of a typology of strategies of IS that is not well organized within CMC and a lack of theorizing on how information is acquired. This dissertation focuses on both of these issues through seven chapters, including an introduction (Chapter One), and explication of social IS (Chapter Two), four empirical studies (Chapters Three through Six), and a general discussion (Chapter Seven). Social IS benefits from explicit conceptualization, and Chapter Two lays the groundwork for subsequent chapters by explicating constructs relevant to social IS. Constructs of central importance to this dissertation include information, social information, IS, and goals. In this chapter, theory relevant to goal acquisition and social IS are described, and the role of CMC as a context in which social IS occurs is considered. The ways in which CMC alters the experience of IS are also discussed. Social IS is often studied by employing a typology of strategies of social IS (e.g., interactive, active, and passive), which describes various methods to obtain social information. Ramirez et. al (2002) adapted this typology for channels of CMC, and scholars have studied the strategies widely via CMC. Ultimately, the typology and its categorization of strategies requires renovation to account for differences between the offline and online iterations of the typology, address the ways CMC has grown, and ensure consistency between strategies. Three strategies, interaction, experimentation, and observation, are proposed in Chapter Three to constitute the updated typology. This reformulated typology is assessed and compared to the original typology from Ramirez et. al among a sample of daters (N = 346) who recounted their information seeking about a dating partner. Findings indicate that compared to the typology from Ramirez et al. the reformulated typology more accurately captures the experience of these information seekers. When people acquire social information, they must evaluate it to determine its utility. Scholarship on social IS, however, has yet to identify an outcome on which acquired social information should vary. Although information quality has been suggested as an outcome and is often employed in adjacent fields of study, researchers have yet to characterize this concept in the context of social information. Characterizing social information quality presents an opportunity to increase precision by articulating on what social information acquisition has an effect and helping to bridge theorizing about social information acquisition and consequent appraisals of information, such as impressions about a target and certainty in impressions about a target (i.e., attributional confidence). Chapter Four employs a mixed-methods approach involving a thematic analysis and ranked survey data (N = 332) to identify several characteristics of social information quality, including accuracy, relevancy, recency, depth, and understandability. Social IS has implications for various outcomes, including characteristics of information quality and impressions related to a target. The specific relationships between how social information is sought via mediated channels and how it results in such outcomes is undertheorized. Chapter Five uses extant theorizing on goals and IS, to account for the process of social IS and consider how characteristics of information quality, namely recency and accuracy, influence this process. Doing so more comprehensively theorizes on the process of social IS and links it to appraisals made with acquired information. Using an experimental design (N = 171), direct and indirect relationships among the method of IS, information quality, satisfaction of an IS goal, and attributional confidence, are identified. Several antecedent factors influence the goal-driven process of social IS, and constraints, which are enduring expectations to which social goal pursuers pay heed, shape how information is sought. Within CMC, seekers must also contend with features of a channel and the affordances they perceive. In Chapter Six, how constraints, features, and affordances shape social IS when using a dating app is assessed by combining extant theorizing on both social IS and CMC. This study examines the presence or absence of features, operationalized as unidentified browsing and a search bar, and their influence the process of social IS via CMC. A dating app prototype is piloted (N = 126) and then experimentally assessed among a population of adults with experience using dating apps (N = 290). Direct and indirect relationships among features, affordances, information quality, satisfaction of an IS goal, and attributional confidence are assessed. Lastly, a general discussion that coalesces the goals, findings, and connections among the chapters is offered. A summary of the findings and a more comprehensive model of social IS are provided. Limitations and future directions are described. Taken together, the model provided in Chapter Seven both combines the theorizing and findings in previous chapters and articulates a path forward for more theoretically grounded and conceptually defined scholarship on social IS via CMC.