Assessment of Information Use via Internet

Abstract

The differences in demographic characteristics of receivers were considered main predictors for information use in the early stage of information inequity research literatures. This approach was based on the idea of cross-situational consistency and the "source-sending-messages-to-receivers" paradigm. There is, however, growing agreement that situationally-bound factors are better indicators for the prediction of information use. In this study both user-defined situationality and demographic characteristics are examined to assess information use via Internet. This paper expects that user-defined information need is a better predictor than demographic factors for information use in the situation where a receiver initiates the communication process and a medium has an interactive communication function. This study also proposes that communi-cation research for interactive media would be appropriately done with the "receivers-seeking-messages-from-source" paradigm. A survey was performed for university students to find the relative importance of demographic factors and situational factors in using Internet. The result generally supports that situational factors play a more important role than demographic factors in retrieving information via Internet.