Opportunistic discovery of information and millennials: An exploratory survey

Abstract

Now that digital information can be accessed anywhere, there has been a resurgence of interest in information encountering (IE) and the opportunistic discovery of information (ODI). However, no studies have attempted to distinguish between the task-oriented contexts associated with IE and the more diffuse and varied situations in which ODI occurs. The authors conducted a survey (n=48) of undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 25 in order to identify which mechanisms, formats, sources, and contexts provide them with opportunities for serendipitous information acquisition. Further, the survey was adopted to cover a variety of taskspecific (IE) and non-task specific scenarios (ODI). The results of this exploratory study confirm that both IE and ODI seem to be common among this cohort, but the mechanism of delivery and the format in which the information is presented impact the frequency of occurrences. KeywordsEducation, human information behavior, information encountering, millennials, opportunistic discovery of information

Information encountering re-encountered

“…Palsdottir's (2011) work, interestingly, does not specifically reference the concept of serendipity. Instead, she uses the term opportunistic discovery of information (ODI) to refer to “finding information by chance.” As described earlier, ODI and a similar term opportunistic acquisition of information (OAI), have been also used by Erdelez and colleagues (Erdelez, 2004; Million et al , 2013) as a broader concept that encompasses, and extends beyond, IE. As Jiang et al (2015) point out “some defining elements of information encountering have been agreed upon, such as unintentional actions or unexpected locations, sagacious discoveries or connection making, and fortuitous yet valuable outcomes” (p. 1136).…”