Information Behavior of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants in the Digital Environment

摘要

This study was designed to explore the information behavior of people of different generations (i.e., digital natives and digital immigrants) in the contexts of the workplace and everyday life, so that an information literacy program can be designed. White and Le Cornu (2011, 2017) argue that the motivation to engage with the Web could be more significant than generational distinctions. However, as implied by Prensky (2001) with the notion of Digital Natives (referring to the net generation or digital generation) and Digital Immigrants, we are more interested in the information behavior of these different generations. More specifically, we investigate generational differences in information need and information sources during information seeking processes; information evaluation strategies; and information sharing, from behavioral and affective perspectives. We recruited a total of 20 participants (10 each for digital natives and digital immigrants) by convenient and snowball sampling strategies, for semi-structured interviews. The collected data was analyzed by the grounded theory approach and using the Visitors and Residents (V&R) mapping technique of White and colleagues (2011, 2012, 2017) for visualizing the distribution of information resource use. Our results show that work tasks and occupation generally play important roles in information seeking for the purposes of problem solving and knowledge acquisition in workplaces. However, digital immigrants are more dependent on personal networks for information seeking than are digital natives. People’s information evaluation strategies are affected by their level of education, as well as their perceived credibility of information. Both digital natives and immigrants have used social networking sites in everyday contexts, and maintaining interpersonal relationships is one of the key motivations for information sharing. The research results also reveal the significance of personal beliefs about the credibility of information among digital natives and digital immigrants. Implications of the research results are proposed.