Users of online search engines often find it difficult to express their need for information in the form of a query. However, if the user can identify examples of the kind of documents they require then they can employ a technique known as relevance feedback. Relevance feedback covers a range of techniques intended to improve a user's query and facilitate retrieval of information relevant to a user's information need. In this paper we survey relevance feedback techniques. We study both automatic techniques, in which the system modifies the user's query, and interactive techniques, in which the user has control over query modification. We also consider specific interfaces to relevance feedback systems and characteristics of searchers that can affect the use and success of relevance feedback systems.
In this article, we investigate the criteria used by online searchers when assessing the relevance of Web pages for information-seeking tasks. Twenty-four participants were given three tasks each, and they indicated the features of Web pages that they used when deciding about the usefulness of the pages in relation to the tasks. These tasks were presented within the context of a simulated work-task situation. We investigated the relative utility of features identified by participants (Web page content, structure, and quality) and how the importance of these features is affected by the type of information-seeking task performed and the stage of the search. The results of this study provide a set of criteria used by searchers to decide about the utility of Web pages for different types of tasks. Such criteria can have implications for the design of systems that use or recommend Web pages. IntroductionInformation retrieval (IR) systems aim to provide users with information that will help them in relation to the information need that they expressed to the system (typically in the form of a query). Searchers are then usually involved in the process of evaluating the utility (or the relevance) of the information (i.e., documents) that the IR system retrieves. One of the most common information-seeking situations entails the use of an Internet search engine (Jansen, Spink, & Saracevic, 2000). The availability of information on the World Wide Web (WWW) has established search engines as a major tool for IR and Web documents as a popular medium through which users access information.Assessing the utility of information in relation to an information need is a common task for online searchers. Studies on peoples' perceptions of the relevance of information demonstrate that a range of factors affect human judgements of relevance (e.g., Barry, 1994Barry, , 1998Cool, Belkin, & Kantor, 1993;Maglaughlin & Sonnenwald, 2002;Schamber, 1991). However, such studies often only consider formal textual documents such as journal and conference articles rather than the wide range of formally and informally produced multimedia documents found on the Web. The nature of the IR task on the WWW is different from that on more traditional IR systems (Jansen et al., 2000). One of the differences is the idiosyncrasy of the Web documents themselves. There is generally a large degree of variability in the quality, authority, and layout of Web pages. Moreover, the type of elements such pages contain (e.g., text, multimedia, links) can also vary to a large degree (Woodruff, Aoki, Brewer, Gauthier, & Rowe, 1996), creating a heterogeneous collection of documents distributed over distinct geographic areas.The motivation behind this study was to gain a better understanding of what features make a Web document useful for information seeking. We concentrated specifically on information-seeking tasks-finding Web pages that contain relevant or useful information-because this is one of the prominent uses of Web pages. It is also a task for which there exist ma...
Purpose – The video-sharing website YouTube encourages interaction between its users via the provision of a user comments facility. This was originally envisaged as a way for viewers to provide information about and reactions to videos, but is employed for other communicative purposes including sharing ideas, paying tributes, social networking, and question answering. This study seeks to examine and categorise the types of comments created by YouTube users to highlight the various ways in which this interactive feature has been employed as a means of communication and self-expression. Design/methodology/approach – By conducting a content analysis of 66,637 user comments on YouTube videos the authors created a classification schema which may be used to categorise the types of comments users leave. Findings – The schema reveals ten broad categories, and 58 subcategories which reflect the wide-ranging use of the YouTube comments facility. Research limitations/implications – As YouTube continues to evolve, new types of comments that do not appear in the scheme outlined will appear. However, this schema will provide an initial structure upon which other investigations can build when analysing the ongoing use of the YouTube comments feature as a communication device. Practical implications – This scheme may be used for researchers in a variety of disciplines who are interested in using user-generated content. The scheme will aid in the description and mining of this content and provides a way of structuring this content into categories representing user intent. Social implications – This study highlights the variety of purposes to which the user commenting facility of YouTube is employed. These include purposes such as reminiscence, grieving, giving advice and communication. Originality/value – This is the first detailed, content-based analysis of the types of comments created by YouTube users. The classification scheme facilitates the analysis of these comments for a variety of purposes, including marketing, communication studies and studies of information seeking
The Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output.
Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the Strathprints administrator: strathprints@strath.ac.ukThe Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.