The main objective of Information Retrieval (IR) systems is to satisfy searchers' needs. A great deal of research has been conducted in the past to attempt to achieve a better insight into searchers' needs and the factors that can potentially in uence the success of an Information Retrieval and Seeking (IR&S) process. One of the factors which has been considered is searchers' emotion. It has been shown in previous research that emotion plays an important role in the success of an IR&S process which has the purpose of satisfying an information need. However, these previous studies do not give a su ciently prominent position to emotion in IR, since they limit the role of emotion to a secondary factor, by assuming that a lack of knowledge (the need for information) is the primary factor (the motivation of the search). In this paper, we propose to treat emotion as the principal factor in entertainment-based IR&S process, and therefore one that ought to be considered by the retrieval algorithms.
The idea that IR systems help searchers to overcome their
information need (IN) is a leitmotif since the early days of
IR: the main task is to locate documents containing
information relevant to such needs. Within this view, a searcher
is considered as an agent that interacts with an IR system
with the intention of seeking information [
In this paper, we argue that standard and dominant view
doesn't su ciently consider all the possible aspects of
searchers' needs. Information Science (IS) researchers have argued
about the existence of needs other than IN, and discussed
their roles in the cognitive aspects of human beings and in
IR&S behaviour. Examples include Wilson's interrelation
between physiological, a ective and information needs in
IR&S behaviour [
Although these views better capture the searchers' mind
compared to the traditional view, their accounting for the
role of emotion is limited to its relation with cognition in
the process of satisfying an IN in an IR&S behaviour, e.g.,
Kuhlthau's [
Others, e.g., Wilson [
In general, the current landscape of the role of emotion
in IR&S behaviour is incomplete. Moshfeghi [
The pervasiveness of emotionally-rich content on the web, such as movies, music, images, news, blogs, customer review, Facebook comments and Twitter, highlights the demand for such contents, and, indirectly, their role in satisfying searchers' needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the IR&S behaviour backed up by an entertainment aspect. The position of this paper is that emotion is a primary motivation (either directly or indirectly) behind an entertainment-based IR&S behaviour.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows: Section 2
discusses Kuhlthau's [
There are many theories and models that attempt to
explain the information seeking behaviour. Kuhlthau's
information seeking process model is one of the rst and most
popular models to investigate the a ective along with
cognitive and physical aspects of a searcher in an
information seeking process. She proposes that people's feelings,
thoughts and actions interact within their information
seeking process. Kuhlthau's information seeking process model
describes the searchers' common patterns of seeking
meaning from information, to extend their knowledge state on a
complex problem or topic which has a discrete beginning and
ending [
Although this model is an important step towards understanding the role of emotion in IR/IS, it does not encompass many important aspects of emotion in IR. Kuhlthau considers emotion/a ect as a factor in uencing the information seeking process, rather than a need in itself. Moreover, Kuhlthau's model is limited by making uncertainty central, i.e., as driving the seeking process while we argue that positive or negative emotion states, high or low arousal level, such as stress or boredom respectively, could also motivate users to engage in an information seeking behaviour. Therefore, a key limitation lies in the fact that the a ective side of searchers is interpreted as only being a secondary motivational source for information need. In this paper, we consider emotion as a separate need. This is explored further in next section.
The goal of this section is to argue that emotion should be considered as the primary factor in entertainment-based IR&S behaviour: emotion can be considered as an individual need which can motivate searchers to engage in an IR&S process. The secondary factor of emotion refers to the fact that emotion (in relation to cognition) in uences every aspect of the searchers' IR&S behaviour, and can thus in uence the success or failure of an IR&S process. First, we will elaborate on emotion as a secondary factor in IR&S process.
As discussed in Section 2, the secondary nature of emotion
in IR&S scenarios has been investigated for a long time [
When the emotion need of the searcher is to diminish the negative feelings associated with a lack of knowledge (i.e., an IN), the emotion need would be satis ed if the IN associated with it is resolved. However, in an entertainment-based IR&S process, the emotion need of the searcher is not associated with a particular IN, and is an autonomous need by itself. An example of such needs are the scenarios where the searchers are stressed and look at some clips that could help to relieve their stress, e.g., when searchers are seeking for funny clips in YouTube. Of course, one way of nding these clips is by looking at the popular (most viewed/highly recommended) videos. In such scenario there is no particular information need to be resolved, but only an emotion need.
From the above, we can now argue that emotion in an entertainment-based IR&S process acts as a primary factor, i.e. as an autonomous and important need. 4.
In this paper, we explained the role of emotion in entertainment-based IR&S behaviour. We explained that in the normative view of IR/IS, the focus is on the satisfaction of searchers' IN. Although the role of emotion is acknowledged as a factor in uencing the whole IR&S behaviour, its role was limited to the study of its in uence on the process of satisfying an IN. However, emotion can be a source of motivation on its own for a searcher to engage in an IR&S process. Such scenarios have not been considered in the IR/IS community, and this motivated the de nition of the emotion need concept. We argued that there are emotion needs that can motivate searchers to engage in IR&S behaviour which strictly speaking does not have an IN. The pervasiveness of the use of IR applications for the purpose of entertainment and the existence of emotionally-rich data on the web provides evidence that some information seeking behaviour can be categorised under other strategies than information need that can lead to better satisfaction of the searchers' needs. Given all these evidences, the conclusion of this paper is that emotion act as a primary factor behind entertainment-based IR&S behaviours. Finally, there is not much research about entertainment-based IR&S processes. This is due to the limitations associated with it, such as lack of datasets, evaluation methodology, metrics and procedure. An attempt to solve such limitations is a possible direction for future work.