We are the Change that we Seek: Information Interactions During a Change of Viewpoint There has been considerable hype about filter bubbles and echo chambers influencing the views of information consumers. The fear is that these technologies are undermining democracy by swaying opinion and creating an uninformed, polarised populace. The literature in this space is mostly technocentric, addressing the impact of technology. In contrast, our work is the first research in the information interaction field to examine changing viewpoints from a humancentric perspective. It provides a new understanding of view change and how we might support informed, autonomous view change behaviour. We interviewed 18 participants about a selfidentified change of view, and the information touchpoints they engaged with along the way. In this paper we present the information types and sources that informed changes of viewpoint, and the ways in which our participants interacted with that information. We describe our findings in the context of the technocentric literature and suggest principles for designing digital information environments that support user autonomy and reflection in viewpoint formation.

Social information behaviour in Bookshops: implications for digital libraries We discuss here our observations of the interaction of bookshop customers with the books and with each other. Contrary to our initial expectations, customers do not necessarily engage in focused, joint information search, as observed in libraries, but rather the bookshop is treated as a social space similar to a cafe. Our results extend the known repertoire of collaborative behaviours, supporting further development of models of user tasks and goals. We compare our findings with previous work and discuss possible implications of our observations for the design of digital libraries as places of both information access and social interaction. xc2xa9 2013 SpringerVerlag.