Social Media Question Asking: A Developing Country Perspective

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.