Flickr’s potential as an academic image resource: An exploratory study

Abstract

Many web 2.0 sites are extremely popular and contain vast amounts of content, but how much of this content is useful in academia? This exploratory paper investigates the potential use of the popular web 2.0 image site Flickr as an academic image resource. The study identified images tagged with any one of 12 subject names derived from recognized academic subject categories in the three main Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) citation indexes. Image content analysis was used to determine the types of images found, and term-frequency analysis of associated tags was carried out to provide additional insights into the context behind image placement. The results show that Flickr can be used as a resource for subject-specific images in some subject areas; and that non subject-specific images can also prove to be of value for individual academics.