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Social Media Question Asking: A Developing Country Perspective

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Recommendation and Search in Social Networks

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks ((LNSN))

Abstract

The last decade has seen the emergence of the social networking sites (SNS) and researchers are investigating the useful applications of this technology in various areas apart from its recreational value. Ubiquitous presence of SNS has enabled us to obtain customized information seamlessly from our acquaintance. There have been many works that analyzed the types and topics of questions people ask in these networks and why. Topics like what motivates people to answer such queries, how to integrate the traditional search engines, and SNS together are also well investigated. In this research, we focus on the use of this technology in underdeveloped parts of the world and the new doors it has opened for its inhabitants in terms of obtaining information. Analyzing 880 status messages collected from a widely used SNS, we have observed that, unavailability and inadequacy of information on web in developing countries play a significant role to motivate users using SNS for information retrieval. Based on a structured survey on 328 persons, we have tried to emphasize the differences between social search and traditional web search. Our statistical analysis finds the correlations among different relevant parameters and provides insight that one might require to consider while developing any application for SNS-based searching.

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Acknowledgments

This research is conducted with the help of the students and faculty members of the Human Technology Interaction (HTI) research group at the Dept. of CSE, BUET, Bangladesh.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Hasan Shahid Ferdous

  2. BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Mashrura Tasnim, Saif Ahmed & Md. Tanvir Alam Anik

Authors
  1. Hasan Shahid Ferdous
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  2. Mashrura Tasnim
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  3. Saif Ahmed
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  4. Md. Tanvir Alam Anik
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hasan Shahid Ferdous .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

    Özgür Ulusoy

  2. Statistics and Computer Information Systems, Baruch College, CUNY, New York, New York, USA

    Abdullah Uz Tansel

  3. Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

    Erol Arkun

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Ferdous, H.S., Tasnim, M., Ahmed, S., Anik, M.T.A. (2015). Social Media Question Asking: A Developing Country Perspective. In: Ulusoy, Ö., Tansel, A., Arkun, E. (eds) Recommendation and Search in Social Networks. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14379-8_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14379-8_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14378-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14379-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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