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Drawing from coping and uses and gratifications theories, the study investigates how individuals' coping style, purposes and features/elements of social media interact and influence the perceived usefulness of social media elements. Over 1,000 undergraduate students in the United States participated in the study. Data are collected through an online survey. Findings and implications are discussed.

The study was conducted to examine how and why college students select certain information sources over others for their course-related work. It also aimed at identifying user characteristics affecting the source perception and selection, and With advances in technologies, an increasing amount of information is made available in various formats and through different channels. Today, users can acquire information through not only the traditional, printed information sources, but also a wide variety of

EDITOR'S SUMMARY ASIS&T's Special Interest Group/Information Needs, Seeking and Use (SIG/USE) met during the 2014 Annual Meeting for the group's 14th Annual Research Symposium, focusing on Context in Information Behavior Research. Keynote speaker J. David Johnson set the tone as he encouraged research into the context of information activities outside the usual settings and using varied theoretical perspectives and tools. Attendees also heard 14 lightning talks exploring conceptual and methodological issues. Speakers considered time and emotion as dominant contextual influences in information behavior, the role of information overload and ways diverse contexts affect seeking and providing information. Discussion of research methods encouraged a mixed‐method approach and analytic bracketing and illuminated how study participants create their own information context. During the world café session, tablemates discussed how information context is constructed and evolves, research gaps and available methodologies. The symposium ended with presentation of awards for outstanding research, best paper and poster and for travel to pursue studies. Gary Marchionini was recognized for his outstanding contributions to information behavior research throughout his career.

The study investigated whether undergraduate students adopt a “one‐size‐fits‐all” approach when using social media to meet different goals (entertainment, information‐seeking/learning, personal identity, and social interaction/ integration). Findings suggest the selective use of platforms for different goals. The perceived usefulness of elements in evaluating social media information also differed across goals, particularly for entertainment. Multiple regression analyses revealed the familiarity with social media information quality issues, self‐efficacy, and gender significantly associated with respondents' tendency to give dissimilar usefulness ratings across goals.