Making Sense of Sensemaking in the Digital World

摘要

In this keynote presentation I discuss some of the exciting phenomena and challenges that are emerging as the digital universe evolves to become a more social medium that supports more complex information-seeking and learning activities. This discussion emerges from attempts to extend previous work on Information Foraging Theory [1] to address these new trends in online information-seeking and sensemaking. Information Foraging Theory is a theory of human-information interaction that aims to explain and predict how people will best shape themselves to their information environments, and how information environments can best be shaped to people. The theory has mainly focused on information seeking by the solitary user, but as the Internet and Web have evolved, so too must the theory, and so I will discuss recent studies of sensemaking and the social production, sharing, and use of information in areas such as wikis, social tagging, social network sites, and social search. The opportunity (and challenges) are enormous for developing a scientific foundation to support online groups and communities that are engaged in creating, organizing, and sharing the knowledge produced through social sensemaking.