How Students Seek Information in the Context of Fitness and Physical Exercise

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingPublished conference proceedingScientificpeer-review

Abstract

In the last decades, our society evolved from information scarcity to information abundance. We often find ourselves overloaded with information on how to do many things. Consequently, the problem of information seeking often turns into a filtering and evaluation problem. In this research, we built upon extant theory on information literacy, rich media, and information seeking in everyday life in the context of students’ fitness and physical exercise. This is important as the students’ practices of fitness and physical exercise can lead to desirable outcomes such as health and wellbeing, or negative outcomes such as pain and injury. With a qualitative approach we address “how students seek information in the context of fitness and physical exercise”. This work-in-progress research is based on eight interviews and in-situ observations on the premises of a Nordic University that provides sports services to its students. We cover different fitness modalities such as calisthenics, basketball, weightlifting, stretching, and foam rolling. We find that even if students exhibit elevated levels of literacy in academic issues, they seek and evaluate the information pertaining to their fitness and physical exercise in a quite different way from their study and academic issues. As expected, students prefer rich media information in digital format, but it is striking how every student consumes information in a completely unique way – most of them consume very different content even if practicing the same modality. This is explained by the high personalization, high interactivity, and high intrusiveness of the information providers’ platforms. Students value the corporeal landscape of information literacy. Also, they consume published research on sports science, but only indirectly. Some often provide information to pears as well. We suggest avenues for future research that require cross-disciplinary cooperation (e.g., information studies, media studies, sports science, human computer interation, and artificial intelligence among others).
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationECIL 2023: Information Experience and Information Literacy
EditorsSerap Kurbanoğlu, Sonja Špiranec, Joumana Boustany, Yurdagül Ünal, İpek Şencan, Denis Kos, Esthe Grassian, Diane Mizrachi, Loriene Roy
PublisherSpringer
Pages158-167
Number of pages10
Volume2042, CCIS
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-53001-2
ISBN (Print)978-3-031-53000-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2024
MoE publication typeA4 Article in a conference publication

Publication series

NameCommunications in Computer and Information Science
PublisherSpringer
Volume2042
ISSN (Print)1865-0929
ISSN (Electronic)1865-0937

Keywords

  • Information Literacy · Fitness · Exercise, Physical activity, Physical fitness, Students health, Students wellbeing

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