The Google Generation. Are Ict Innovations Changing Information Seeking Behaviour?

210 Pages·2010·0.924 MB·English

by  Barrie Gunter, Ian Rowlands and David Nicholas (Auth.)

The Google Generation
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The Google Generation
Are ICT innovations changing
information-seeking behaviour?
B G ,
ARRIE UNTER
I R
AN OWLANDS
AND
D N
AVID ICHOLAS
Chandos Publishing
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First published in 2009
ISBN:
978 1 84334 557 2
© B.Gunter,I.Rowlands and D.Nicholas,2009
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Acknowledgements
The book is largely based on the work of the British Library/JISC funded
research project The Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future (The
Google Generation). For further details of the project and associated
reports please see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/
downloads/. Special thanks are due to Maggie Fieldhouse, Carol Tenopir
and Peter Williams who made important contributions to a number of
the original reports produced for this project and from which parts of
this text were drawn.
ix
About the authors
Barrie Gunter MSc, PhDis currently Professor of Mass Communication
and Head of the Department of Media and Communication at the
University of Leicester, having previously held the post of Professor of
Journalism Studies in the Department of Journalism Studies at the
University of Sheffield. Professor Gunter’s research interests include the
study of digital media developments and their impact upon consumer,
social and political behaviour and upon the use of ‘old’ media.
David Nicholas MPhil, PhD is Director of the Department of
Information Studies at University College London. He is also the
Director of the UCL Centre for Publishing and the CIBER research
group. Previously, he was Head of Department in the Department of
Information Science at the City University. Professor Nicholas’s research
interests largely concern mapping behaviour in virtual spaces, the virtual
scholar and the health information consumer.
Ian Rowland PhD is a Reader in Information Studies in the Department
of Information Studies at University College London. He is also Research
Director in the Centre for Publishing at UCL. Dr Rowland’s research
includes the study of scholarly communications, bibliometrics and the
use of e-books and e-journals in higher education.
The authors may be contacted via the publishers.
xi
1
Introduction
Information and communication technologies have evolved at an
unprecedented pace in the past two decades changing the way people live
their lives. While traditional sources of information such as word of
mouth and early mediated forms of communication such as print, radio,
television and telephone retain some importance, they are rapidly being
superseded by networked electronic and computerised communications
systems, most notably the Internet. Developments in information and
communications technologies have transformed people’s lives by opening
up new channels through which they can communicate with each other,
engage in business, consumer-related and personal financial transactions,
and learn about the world. This book is concerned principally with the
significance of these developments for learning, with special reference to
the way this occurs in higher education. Is the printed word on paper
being increasingly supplanted by the electronic word displayed on a
screen? If so, what are the implications of this phenomenon for the way
education institutions supply information to and teach their students and
for the way tutors can most effectively engage with their students in
future? Will there need to be a rethink of formats and techniques of
course delivery? Will the role played by libraries, as information
repositories, also have to change? Or have these changes been
overinflated in their reach and their impact? These are issues that will be
considered and examined in this book.
Since the mid-1990s, as computerised communications networks have
spread beyond specialist user communities such as the academy and
military, their applications have also become increasingly diversified.
Initially used for relatively simple word processing and data analysis
tasks, computers have evolved into multipurpose work stations that can
handle huge quantities of multimedia content and communications
devices that can provide links to others all round the world via different
modalities and enable users to engage in a multitude of diverse
transactions that can substitute for offline mail, telephone calls and face-
to-face meetings.
1
The Google Generation
Technology mergers have created a communications environment in
which distinctive media such as print, broadcasting and
telecommunications now operate businesses in direct competition with
each other in the same markets. Television pictures are no longer only
available through television sets. They can also be obtained via desktop
and portable computers and mobile telephones. Similarly radio
broadcasts are accessible via these same alternative technologies (as well
as via television sets). Meanwhile, telecommunications is no longer a
simple voice communications medium. Mobile telephones can
communicate via text and pictures.
Perhaps the most significant development in communications in the
past 20 years is the Internet. This medium provides users with access to
massive quantities of information on virtually every subject anyone can
think of. It is also an interpersonal communications system through
which users can maintain contacts with people they know as well as
search for and find new contacts. It comprises the biggest library in the
world and provides easy access to a huge community of users who can
become friends, advisors, counsellors, teachers, suppliers or customers.
Although an increasingly important source of entertainment for many of
its users, the Internet has always had close links to the educational world
and is emerging as one of the most valued and trusted sources of
information and learning for rapidly growing numbers of people. As this
book will discuss, online media technologies have been readily embraced
in the world of education (New Media Consortium, 2007). We should
not be too surprised about this given that the Internet was well
established as a form of communication within higher education,
especially in the United States, long before it was adopted by mass
consumers. The enthusiasm for adoption of online tools in educational
contexts has been driven in part by the acknowledgement that their
widespread use – especially by younger generations – across a diverse
array of non-educational contexts might indicate a sea change in the way
people learn. Yet, as we will see in this book, this observation is not
always borne out by empirical evidence concerning how young people
search for information for educational purposes.
With the expansion of the amount of information that is available to
people and the growing ease with which it can be accessed, we shall be
asking whether significant changes have occurred in the way individuals
confront and use information. We need to know whether old
information sources are being usurped by new ones. We also need to
know, in the case of new information search technologies, whether they
do cater effectively to convenience of information access and in a form
2
Introduction
with which users are comfortable. Has the Internet conditioned
distinctive information search behaviours or habits?
Search for the Google Generation
Given that a generation of people exists today that has never known the
world without the Internet, does that generation exhibit distinctive
qualities in relation to the way it seeks and uses information and display
idiosyncratic preferences concerning the way they like information to be
packaged that sets it apart from pre-Internet generations? In particular,
is there any evidence that the younger generation of today that is
accustomed to the ubiquitous availability of a range of communications
technologies searches for and uses information in qualitatively distinctive
ways from their elders? If this is the case, to what extent might this
generational distinctiveness in orientation towards information have
important implications for the future of learning and, more especially,
for the role that libraries – those traditional information repositories –
might play in educational contexts? If there is an emergent community
of young information seekers whose information-related behaviours are
firmly tied to search engines and online repositories, are we witnessing
the emergence of a new generation – a Google Generation? Such
questions represent a primary theme of enquiry for this book.
Understanding the diffusion of new
technologies
In examining the evidence for the emergence of a distinctive new
generation of information users – a new community of information users
who might be called a ‘Google Generation’ – are we witnessing a new
social phenomenon that could have important implications for
information providers? In this book, we will consider what evidence
exists for the concept of a distinctive generation of information seekers
and users. We will consider changes that have been witnessed to the way
people seek out and use information sources online. We need to
determine whether the patterns of behaviour we can observe in relation
to the use of online information search tools represent radically different
approaches to people’s information search strategies. It does not
automatically follow that because the information technology is new the
3
The Google Generation
mental search strategies used by information seekers have also changed
in fundamental ways.
The study of information and communication technology innovation,
adoption and diffusion is not a new field triggered by the emergence of
the Internet. Attempts to map out and understand innovation diffusion
pre-date the modern Internet era by several decades. The ‘diffusion
model’, for instance, has been used to study how different technology
innovations have penetrated the user populations for which they were
intended (Rogers, 1986; Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971). A constant
S-shaped curve has consistently been found to describe the path followed
by most innovations from their point of introduction to a stage where
they became widely used.
Innovations tend initially to be used by small numbers of people –
amounting to perhaps 5 per cent of the population – often called
‘innovators’ who like to try out new products and services. Having been
trialled in this way, innovations then spread to a slightly larger group of
‘early adopters’ (between 10 and 25 per cent of the population) and then
if these like the innovation, it gradually spreads to larger and larger
groups of people until the innovation may eventually end up being used
by most people (Rogers, 1995).
Historical tracking has indicated that not all innovations that are
eventually adopted by most people penetrate society at the same pace.
One important factor in this context is whether an ‘innovation’ is
completely new or whether it represents a new version of an existing
technology. A key concept in understanding the spread of new
information and communication technologies is the ‘tipping point’, which
refers to a critical mass of adopters who can then trigger dramatically
accelerated penetration of an innovation. Diffusion researchers have
reported previously that new technologies must first achieve a critical
mass before they spread to become adopted by the majority. This ‘critical
mass’ tends to comprise between one in ten and one in four of potential
users of an innovation within a specific population. Once this level of
adoption has been reached dramatic growth can then occur (Rogers,
1995). This concept is explored further in later chapters in this book and
can be used to judge whether some new online tools and technologies still
in minority use have yet reached their ‘tipping point’ beyond which one
might predict rapid and widespread adoption.
Another feature of innovation adoption is that the penetration of
innovations is not always evenly distributed throughout any specific
population. Some people may adopt a technology while others never do.
Hence a ‘digital divide’ may develop whereby some people adopt
4