Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter

Toine Bogers; Lennart Björneborn

doi:10.9776/13175

Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter

Toine Bogers, Lennart Björneborn

Department of Communication

1357 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the iConference 2013
Number of pages	13
Place of Publication	IDEALS
Publisher	iSchools
Publication date	28 Jan 2013
Pages	196-208
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.9776/13175
Publication status	Published - 28 Jan 2013
Event	iConference 2013: Scholarship in Action: Data - Innovation - Wisdom - University of North Texas, Fort Worth, Texas, United States Duration: 12 Feb 2013 → 15 Feb 2013

Conference

Conference	iConference 2013
Location	University of North Texas
Country/Territory	United States
City	Fort Worth, Texas
Period	12/02/2013 → 15/02/2013

Keywords

serendipity
information behaviour
everyday life
information sharing
social computing
social and community informatics
qualitative data analysis
quantitative data analysis
Twitter
online social networks

Access to Document

10.9776/13175

PDFFinal published version, 254 KB

https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/handle/2142/36052

iConference 2013
Björneborn, L. (Speaker)
12 Feb 2013 → 15 Feb 2013
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Organisation of and participation in conference

Cite this

@inproceedings{19d58926bdc24a6f83bfd647a6895ba6,

title = "Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter",

abstract = "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 {\textquoteleft}traditional{\textquoteright} serendipity) and foreground serendipity (or {\textquoteleft}synchronicity{\textquoteright}, 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.",

keywords = "serendipity, information behaviour, everyday life, information sharing, social computing, social and community informatics, qualitative data analysis, quantitative data analysis, Twitter, online social networks",

author = "Toine Bogers and Lennart Bj{\"o}rneborn",

year = "2013",

month = jan,

day = "28",

doi = "10.9776/13175",

language = "English",

pages = "196--208",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the iConference 2013",

publisher = "iSchools",

note = "iConference 2013, iConf13 ; Conference date: 12-02-2013 Through 15-02-2013",

}

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 -

Micro-serendipity: Meaningful Coincidences in Everyday Life Shared on Twitter

Abstract

Conference

Keywords

Access to Document

Fingerprint

Activities

iConference 2013

Cite this