Scholarly uses of TV content: bibliometric and content analysis of the information use environment

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of television (TV) content for scholarly purposes. It focuses on: profile of scholars using TV content; the structure of their need for TV content; the situations in which scholars need TV content; and their patterns of use of TV content in each research stage. Design/methodology/approach – Taylor’s four components of the information use environment has contributed to the development of a conceptual framework. The data from the use of TV content by 668 scholars were profiled using correspondence analysis and co-word analysis. Additionally, the data from 15 interviews and content from 240 journal articles were analysed. Findings – The authors determined that the environment of the scholarly use of TV content is unique in terms of the scholars’ academic domains, research topics, motivation, and patterns of use. Six academic domains were identified as having used TV content to a meaningful degree, and their knowledge structure was presented as a map depicting the scholars’ needs for TV content. Scholars are likely to use TV content when they deal with timely social and cultural topics, or human behaviour. The scholars also showed different patterns of use of TV content at each stage of research. Originality/value – In this study, TV content was newly examined from the perspective of an information source for scholarly purposes, and it was found to be a meaningful source in several domains. This result extends the knowledge of information sources in scholarly communication and information services.