Music questions in social Q&A: an analysis of Yahoo! Answers

Abstract

Purpose -Social question and answer (social Q&A) sites have become a popular tool for obtaining music information. This paper investigates what users ask about, what experience the questions convey, and how users specify their questions.Design/methodology/approach -A total of 3897 music questions from the social Q&A site Yahoo! Answers were categorized according to their question type, user experience, and question specification.Findings -The music questions were diverse with (dis)approval (42%), factual (21%), and advice (15%) questions as the most frequent types. Advice questions were the longest and roughly twice as long as (dis)approval and factual questions. The user experience associated with the questions was most often pragmatic (24%) or senso-emotional (12%). Pragmatic questions were typically about the user's own performance of music, while senso-emotional questions were about finding music for listening. Notably, half of the questions did not convey information about the user experience but the absence of such information did not reduce the number of answers. In specifying the questions, the most frequent information was about the music context and the user context. Research limitations/implications-This study suggests a division of labor between social Q&A sites and search engines for music information retrieval. It should be noted that the study is restricted to one social Q&A site.Originality/value -Social Q&A sites provide an opportunity for studying what information real users seek about music and what information they specify to retrieve it, thereby elucidating the role of social Q&A in music information seeking.

Why are some websites researched more than others? A review of researh into the global top twenty

“…The accuracy of the answers given on Yahoo Answers has been assessed for medical topics (Ohigashi et al, 2017), as discussed above for YouTube and Wikipedia. In contrast, music-related answers have been investigated from an information behaviour perspective, focusing on the types of questions asked and the types of answers given (Hertzum;Borlund, 2017). Also in contrast, the knowledge present in Yahoo Answers has been analysed from a Wikipedia-like perspective (Shen; Li; Liu; Grant, 2015).…”

Gender differences in music search behaviour on social Q&A sites: A case study on Zhihu

“…In the studies on information content, scholars often investigated question types and answer features. In line with the study of Harper et al (2010), Hertzum et al (2017) categorized music-related questions on Yahoo answers into six types, including advice, identification, (dis)approval, quality, prescriptive, and factual. Bae et al (2017) investigated the features of the answers that questioners want on social Q&A.…”

“…Stieglitz et al (2013) pointed out that the positive or negative sentiment in political Twitter messages are significantly related to retweet behaviour not only the quantity but also the speed. Hertzum et al (2017) examined senso-emotional experience user experience conveyed in the questions on social Q&A sites. They found that 12% of the 3897 music questions on Yahoo Answers embodied the questioner's personal emotion, albeit unrelated to gender differences.…”

“…On Zhihu, the average length of the 12,331 music questions was 21.56 Chinese characters, which is much shorter than that of all the other social Q&A platforms in previous studies. The average length of the 3897 music questions was 41.30 words on Yahoo Answers (Hertzum et al, 2017). Each site has different question lengths, at Answerbag, the average length was 103 words, and at Metafilter, the average length was 844 words in Harper et al (2010).…”

“…In this light, music information behaviour in social Q&A has become an important research topic in the field (e.g. Hertzum et al, 2017).…”