Motivations and intentions of flickr users in enriching flick records for library of congress photos

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand users' motivations and intentions in the use of institutional collections on social tagging sites. Previous social tagging studies have collected social tagging data and analyzed how tagging functions as a tool to organize and retrieve information. Many studies focused on the patterns of tagging rather than the users' perspectives. To provide a more comprehensive picture of users' social tagging activities in institutional collections, and how this compares to social tagging in a more personal context, we collected data from social tagging users by surveying 7,563 participants in the Library of Congress's Flickr Collection. We asked users to describe their motivations for activities within the LC Flickr Collection in their own words using open‐ended questions. As a result, we identified 11 motivations using a bottom‐up, open‐coding approach: affective reactions, opinion on photo, interest in subject, contribution to description, knowledge sharing, improving findability, social network, appreciation, personal use, and personal relationship. Our study revealed that affective or emotional reactions play a critical role in the use of social tagging of institutional collections by comparing our findings to existing frameworks for tagging motivations. We also examined the relationships between participants' occupations and our 11 motivations.

Metadata for diversity

“…Additionally, tagging is not undertaken by a representative audience. In a study by Kipp et al (2017) exploring the use of tagging to enrich descriptions of materials from the Library of Congress, they found that 70 percent of participants were male and 29 percent were female, with the majority of participants ranging between 25 and 54 years old and holding a college degree. Bates and Rowley’s (2011) comparison of three traditional library OPACs to LibraryThing’s folksonomies in the treatment of “non-dominant” identities showed that user-generated tagging allows greater visibility of these identities.…”

Reddit: A novel data source for cultural ecosystem service studies

“…The difference in contents may also be down to the motivations to upload to each platform. Kipp et al (2017) found that Flickr users have multiple motivations for uploading photographs including wanting to get an opinion on their photographs and because they have an interest in a particular subject. However, as one of the main features of Reddit is the ranking of posts through user votes (Duggan and Smith 2013), further work should be undertaken to assess whether the relative motivations for uploading to Reddit are similar to other social media sites.…”

Untitled

“…Autores como Marlow, Naaman, Davis & Hall (2006), Rorissa (2010), Leitão (2010) e Freixa-Font (2011) abordam a utilização do Flickr como instrumento de divulgação de coleções fotográficas. De modo mais específico, considerando que o propósito desta pesquisa é a organização e representação da documentação fotográfica, importa conhecer o que está a ser feito e teorizado em Arquivos Fotográficos e instituições detentoras de coleções de fotografia, e nesta linha nos apoiaremos nos trabalhos de Kipp, Beak & Choi (2017) e Santos (2017).…”