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What do teens ask their online social networks?: social search practices among high school students

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    The majority of American teens use social network sites (SNSs) but little is known about how they leverage their online social networks to find information. As part of a larger study on social media and information behaviors, we surveyed 158 high school students to learn about their online question asking and answering practices. We describe which teens are most likely to ask and answer questions, what they ask about, on which sites they ask questions, and how useful they perceive SNSs to be as information sources. When possible, we draw comparisons with findings in the literature about adult populations. We contextualize these findings using early insights from interviews and focus groups with 80 teens and discuss how perceptions of audience, privacy concerns, and self-presentation all play a role in teens' use of SNSs to ask and answer questions.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
      February 2014
      1600 pages
      ISBN:9781450325400
      DOI:10.1145/2531602
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      Published: 15 February 2014

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      Author Tags

      1. information seeking
      2. q&a
      3. social media
      4. social search
      5. teens
      6. youth

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      February 15 - 19, 2014
      Maryland, Baltimore, USA

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      CSCW '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 134 of 497 submissions, 27%;
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