Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Information-Offering by Anonymous Users
in a Japanese Human Flesh Search
Analysis of Motivation in a Social Media Platform
Hidenobu Sai
14.1
Introduction
The development and diffusion of information and communication technologies
(ICT) has led to the development of various tools and services. Among them, the
tools and services that are referred to as 'social media' are increasingly being used.
Social media include blogs, Twitter, social network services (SNS), such as
Facebook, image and video sharing websites, such as Flickr and YouTube, and
question-and-answer sites, such as Yahoo! Answers and Quora.
In this study, social media are defined as services or platforms in which many
people can participate by offering and exchanging information. One characteristic
of this kind of social media is that users attach greater importance to the information
offered by and shared with other users than to information from a service provider.
Thus, to be functional and attractive, social media have to encourage and motivate
users to offer information.
Within this context, the objective of this study is to examine motivations behind
information-offering in social media. In this chapter, we will begin by summarizing
several previous studies that have focused on the reasons why individuals use
various kinds of social media and their motivations for offering information.
Next, we will present existing research about the 'human flesh search', which is a
specific phenomenon in social media, and analyze a Japanese case of a human flesh
search from the aspect of differences in information behavior online and offline.
Finally, we explore the motivations behind contributions to human flesh searches
and countermeasures against human flesh searches from the perspective of expec-
tancy theory of motivation and information prospectability.
