{"id":66357,"date":"2014-03-27T08:30:45","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T13:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=66357"},"modified":"2014-03-27T08:18:47","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T13:18:47","slug":"combating-satisficing-through-relevance-facebook-reddit-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=66357","title":{"rendered":"Combating satisficing through relevance: Facebook, Reddit, and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ North Dakota<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Combating satisficing through relevance: Facebook, Reddit, and beyond<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"clayton.hayes\"<\/a>The increased availability of information online has presented information seekers with an\u00a0often overwhelming array of sources to choose from. This (along with other factors) has led to a\u00a0growing concern in the academic world with satisficing. Satisficing, put briefly, is the tendency\u00a0of information seekers to pick the first source they come across that satisfies a bare minimum of\u00a0requirements<\/strong>. I think it would be fair to say that librarians are usually concerned with satisficing\u00a0as it applies to student research. The classic example of satisficing is the use of Wikipedia; a\u00a0student performing research may choose to look up their topic on Wikipedia and, though the\u00a0article may link to other information sources, the student will choose Wikipedia as their source\u00a0because it is convenient and contains enough information as they feel is necessary.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that I have anything against Wikipedia. I think it\u2019s an excellent information\u00a0source and, as one of my Library School professors often said, it is sometimes the best source\u00a0available on some topics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am actually more concerned with the way satisficing<\/strong> is addressed by librarians and other\u00a0information professionals. Students are told not to use Wikipedia on assignments, to determine\u00a0whether or not a particular website is an appropriate resource, to look for bias on the part of\u00a0the author or authors. These are all very important concepts, but do they affect the information\u00a0seekers in any meaningful way? How likely is it that these concepts, when presented to students\u00a0through the lens of academia, will stick after they leave the classroom?<\/p>\n

There are places, though, where people must deal with difficult information-related choices on\u00a0a daily basis. Places where satisficing runs rampant and few, if any, attempt to stop it. There are\u00a0two in particular which I have chosen to use as examples: Facebook and Reddit (specifically the\u00a0\u201cToday I Learned\u201d subreddit).<\/p>\n

Though some reports indicate that Facebook may be decreasing in popularity with teenagers, the\u00a0arguments presented below apply to various social media services. The situation is a common\u00a0one:<\/p>\n

There is a popular video being shared around Facebook. A friend of yours has posted a link,\u00a0not to the video itself, but to a website that has the video embedded within an article about\u00a0the video. You would like the share the video with your friends. Your choice is to then either\u00a0\u201cshare\u201d the link that your friend has posted or to find the original video (probably on Vimeo or\u00a0YouTube) and link directly to that. Either one will satisfy your main requirement, that the video\u00a0is accessible through your Facebook wall, and there are good reasons to make either choice. If\u00a0you like what is said in the article to which your friend has linked, it makes sense for you to link\u00a0to that article as well. Linking to the video directly will allow your friends to watch the video\u00a0without navigating away from Facebook, and will require less effort on their part.<\/p>\n

The former seems to me to be the most common course of action taken, and I suspect that this is\u00a0due to satisficing more than anything else. It is the easier of the two options for the information\u00a0user making the choice, requiring only a single click, and satisfies their minimum requirements\u00a0as noted above.<\/p>\n

This example, along with similar ones that arise in other social media services, provide a means\u00a0by which librarians (and other information professionals) can address the concept of satisficing\u00a0in a way that is likely more relevant to learners.<\/strong> I think that if information users can begin to see\u00a0satisficing as it exists in their everyday lives, they will be better equipped to recognize satisficing\u00a0when it occurs in their academic endeavors. One more click is often all it takes to move from a\u00a0less-desirable information source (such as the article in the above example) to one that is more\u00a0desirable (such as the video itself).<\/p>\n

Teaching information seekers the mantra of \u201cone more click\u201d (though technically inaccurate in\u00a0some cases) provides them an easy-to-accomplish goal that trains them to put more consideration\u00a0into what they want out of information sources. In particular, it is immediately applicable in\u00a0the \u201cclassic\u201d case of Wikipedia. Articles will often feature links to cited sources, and one or two\u00a0more clicks will allow information seekers to evaluate those sources directly.<\/p>\n

These examples can help learners make a connection between satisficing and their everyday\u00a0lives, but good instruction should include some way to assess their learning in an authentic\u00a0manner. That is where the Today I Learned subreddit<\/a> (often abbreviated TIL) may be of use.\u00a0For those unfamiliar, Reddit is a website that allows users to post links to content which other\u00a0users then vote up or down depending on whether or not they approve of the content. The site\u00a0is organized into \u201csubreddits\u201d that feature various themes. In the TIL subreddit, users post\u00a0interesting or surprising facts which they\u2019ve recently come across and provide a link to their\u00a0source.<\/p>\n

Learners could be asked to navigate to the site, to pick a claim that seems interesting to them,\u00a0and then evaluate the source of information used. Asking them to judge the quality of the source,\u00a0whether or not it adequately supports the claim being made, and whether or not there might be\u00a0a better information source available can help to reinforce the concerns surrounding satisficing.\u00a0There is also another underlying lesson: many of the site\u2019s users will vote up content with an\u00a0interesting title without actually consulting the linked source. Asking learners to reflect on this\u00a0fact may lead them to a deeper understanding of information seeking behavior on the web in\u00a0general and their own information seeking behavior in particular.<\/p>\n

This is much more authentic than showing students purpose-built sites like SaveTheRennets.com<\/a>\u00a0or Zapatopi.net<\/a>\u2019s Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site. TIL will feature different content each\u00a0time it is visited, offering more of a variety for instructors and for learners. Allowing users to\u00a0select a claim that is of interest to them can make the lesson more personal, something that will\u00a0help the lesson stick. The TIL site will occasionally feature mature content, however, and the\u00a0target audience should be taken into consideration when determining the suitability of the site for\u00a0use.<\/p>\n

The Internet is full of examples like these, it only takes a bit of outside-of-the-box thinking on\u00a0the part of the instructor. Some are more suitable to certain audiences than others, but examples\u00a0can be found that will suit just about anyone if their information-seeking behavior is taken into\u00a0consideration. Relevance is what\u2019s important, and developing information literacy instruction\u00a0sessions that reflect learners\u2019 everyday lives instead of tying them to academic research may\u00a0allow us to help learners on a grander scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ North Dakota Combating satisficing through relevance: Facebook, Reddit, and beyond The increased availability of information online has presented information seekers with an\u00a0often overwhelming array of sources to choose from. This (along with other factors) has led to a\u00a0growing concern in the academic world with satisficing. Satisficing, put briefly, is the…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":60423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5898,43,3662,1419,5483,5523,6067,1249],"class_list":["post-66357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-clayton-hayes","tag-facebook","tag-inalj-north-dakota","tag-information","tag-online-resources","tag-reddit","tag-satisficing","tag-wikipedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/clayton.hayes_.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-hgh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}