Information Needs and Practices Supported by ChatGPT

TL;DR

This study explores how ChatGPT functions as an information source across various life domains, identifying the types of needs it addresses and the practices it supports, highlighting its role in human understanding and action.

Contribution

It provides a qualitative analysis of user interactions with ChatGPT, categorizing the information needs and practices supported, and conceptualizes information needs as coping skills in the AI era.

Findings

ChatGPT is used across diverse life domains and needs.

Six categories of information practices supported by ChatGPT.

Proposes a new view of information needs as coping skills.

Abstract

This study considers ChatGPT as an information source, investigating the information needs that people come to ChatGPT with and the information practices that ChatGPT supports, through a qualitative content analysis of 205 user vignettes. The findings show that ChatGPT is used in a range of life domains (home/family, work, leisure, etc.) and for a range of human needs (writing/editing, learning, simple programming tasks, etc.), constituting the information needs that people use ChatGPT to address. Related to these information needs, the findings show six categories of information practices that ChatGPT supports: Writing, Deciding, Identifying, Ideating, Talking, and Critiquing. This work suggests that, in the AI age, information need should be conceptualized not just as a matter of "getting questions answered" or even "making sense," but as skillfully coping in the world, a notion that includes both understanding and action. This study leads to numerous opportunities for future work at the junction of generative AI and information needs, seeking, use and experience.