“Hide, stay still and listen carefully”

Birdwatchers’ information seeking and sharing on YouTube

Abstract

This poster presents early findings of an ongoing study about information activities of the birdwatching communities on the YouTube platform. The research aims to find out how they typically seek and share information on this social media and to what extent YouTube videos can satisfy their information needs. To address the questions, the researcher analysed 1988 comments from a sample of the most visited birdwatching videos to identify the patterns based on the user generated content (UGC). The results up to this stage show birdwatching is an incredibly information-rich context and birdwatchers are involved in wide range of information activities to pursue their hobbies.