An Information Foraging Analysis of Note Taking and Note Sharing While Browsing Campaign Information

In this paper, we present an experimental study of political information foraging in the context of e-voting. Participants were observed while searching and browsing the internet for campaign information in a mock-voting situation in three online note-taking conditions: No Notes, Private Notes, and Shared Notes. Interaction analysis of the study data consisted of applying Information Foraging Theory to understand participants´ searching, and browsing behaviors. Empirical results show skewed time allocation to activities, a tradeoff between enrichment vs. exploitation of search results and issues with lack of scent, low value perception, and value depletion of information. Implications for the voter centered design of e-voting portals are discussed.