Opportunistic discovery of information and millennials: An exploratory survey

Abstract

AbstractNow 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 task‐specific (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.