Information Seeking Behaviors
The information seeking behaviors of film meme data collectors, I believe, heavily relies on the literature of the leisure seeking community. Stebbins wrote about leisure seeking, “Stebbin’s work solely on film, he wrote, “More circumscribed is the benefit of learning something in an enjoyable setting that could stay with the participant well beyond the visit to that setting, even while no commitment to a serious pursuit result from the experience” (Stebbins, 2015, p. 21). Movies and the sharing of movies in any form on social media is something that anyone can do and because of the wealth of information online, it is a form of leisure that information professionals must become familiar with.
“Library professional must engage in critical self-reflection and then become involved in the process of getting to know their communities, by conducting their own research and investigation and by building relationships with community members and talking to them” (Cooke, 2016, ppg. 11). Cooke (2016) explains that self-reflection plays a role in information seeking. The examples of information professionals reviewing films or media is always about high art or literary fiction, but what draws viewers online is media that is relatable to the masses and so understanding what the masses gravitate towards is a part of the job. An example that comes to mind is me needing to learn the different Manga books that my patrons ask for. I can understand the books that middle schoolers need for core reading, but if I do not learn about the books they want to read for leisure, there will always be a disconnect. This correlates to film memes in that their memes are created from knowing the pulse of pop culture. For the joke to land, you not only have to understand the film, but you must understand the cultural climate and what people are looking for within those films.
We can look at the research of Mcdonald (2017) and connect it to data collection film memes in that daily events and pop culture connects the community. “It proposes that the individual habits we form when monitoring daily events and seeking information, as well as the sources and channels we use to find information, are based on values, attitudes, and interests learned in sociocultural contexts” (McDonald, pg. 842). If a meme goes viral for a movie, it must be explored what it was that drew attention to it – was it the film, the joke of the meme on the film, or was it a part of something that happened on that day. A recent example of this would be the memes that are shared during the opening monologue for “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday nights. He can start by talking about the State of the Union, and then a meme that references a popular moment in film will pop on the screen, cracking a joke at a presidential candidate. To get the joke and laugh along with the audience, you must know the film, the public figures he is poking fun at, and the meme he has produced to represent it all. The work that went into creating that joke not only shows a huge degree of data collection, but it also shows how important that data collection is to the community.
Resources
Cooke, Nicole A.. Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent
Library Professionals, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central,
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sjsu/detail.action?docID=4742121.
McDonald, J.D., & Levine-Clark, M. (Eds.). (2017). Encyclopedia of Library and Information
Sciences (4th ed.). CRC Press. https://doi-org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/10.1081/E-ELIS4
Stebbins, B., (2015 June 11). Leisure reflections 39: On edutainment as serious hedonism.
Leisure Studies Association. https://leisurestudiesblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/on-edutainment-as-serious-hedonism/