Social media question asking (SMQA): whom do we tag and why?

Abstract

Social media question asking (SMQA) is an interesting application where users ask factual or subjective questions through social networks, also make invitations or seek favours, among other types of queries. Topics like what we ask, what motivates us to answer, how to integrate the traditional search engines with SMQA, etc. have been well investigated. However, the effect on tagging particular people in queries is yet to be explored. In this work, we focus on targeted queries in social networking sites, where people tag some of their friends, but also remains open to others who might want to respond. We conducted a two-phase study to investigate users tagging behaviour based on question topic and type, their rationale behind tagging those particular people, and corresponding outcomes of tagging. Our result contradicts with the existing works that tried to use automated tagging in social networks and identify design opportunities that need to be considered while developing new solutions to assist in this regard.