Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter
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Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter. / Bogers, Toine; Björneborn, Lennart.
Proceedings of the iConference 2013. IDEALS : iSchools, 2013. p. 196-208.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review
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TY - GEN
T1 - Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter
AU - Bogers, Toine
AU - Björneborn, Lennart
PY - 2013/1/28
Y1 - 2013/1/28
N2 - In this paper we present work on micro-serendipity: investigating everyday contexts, conditions, and attributes of serendipity as shared on Twitter. In contrast to related work, we deliberately omit a preset definition of serendipity to allow for the inclusion of micro-occurrences of what people themselves consider as meaningful coincidences in everyday life. We find that different people have different thresholds for what they consider serendipitous, revealing a serendipity continuum. We propose a distinction between background serendipity (or ‘traditional’ serendipity) and foreground serendipity (or ‘synchronicity’, unexpectedly finding something meaningful related to foreground interests). Our study confirms the presence of three key serendipity elements of unexpectedness, insight and value (Makri & Blandford, 2012), and suggests a fourth element, preoccupation (foreground problem/interest), which covers synchronicity. Finally, we find that a combination of features based on word usage, POS categories, and hashtag usage show promise in automatically identifying tweets about serendipitous occurrences.
AB - In this paper we present work on micro-serendipity: investigating everyday contexts, conditions, and attributes of serendipity as shared on Twitter. In contrast to related work, we deliberately omit a preset definition of serendipity to allow for the inclusion of micro-occurrences of what people themselves consider as meaningful coincidences in everyday life. We find that different people have different thresholds for what they consider serendipitous, revealing a serendipity continuum. We propose a distinction between background serendipity (or ‘traditional’ serendipity) and foreground serendipity (or ‘synchronicity’, unexpectedly finding something meaningful related to foreground interests). Our study confirms the presence of three key serendipity elements of unexpectedness, insight and value (Makri & Blandford, 2012), and suggests a fourth element, preoccupation (foreground problem/interest), which covers synchronicity. Finally, we find that a combination of features based on word usage, POS categories, and hashtag usage show promise in automatically identifying tweets about serendipitous occurrences.
KW - serendipity
KW - information behaviour
KW - everyday life
KW - information sharing
KW - social computing
KW - social and community informatics
KW - qualitative data analysis
KW - quantitative data analysis
KW - Twitter
KW - online social networks
U2 - 10.9776/13175
DO - 10.9776/13175
M3 - Article in proceedings
SP - 196
EP - 208
BT - Proceedings of the iConference 2013
PB - iSchools
CY - IDEALS
T2 - iConference 2013
Y2 - 12 February 2013 through 15 February 2013
ER -
ID: 47031016