A Recuperação da informação em redes sociais : o uso e aplicação das hashtags #

Abstract

Contemporary society is experiencing an era in which more and more information is produced, without the guarantee of good use of it, due to the difficulty of access and retrieval. We experience what can be considered as a new historical phase, called the Information Society, where the internet favors the uncontrolled growth of digital content combined with new technologies, becoming a major source for the production and dissemination of information resources. This scenario highlights the need for classification, organization, and treatment of available content so that they can be accessed simply and efficiently. In the web environment, each user has their own way of structuring and organizing their information, whether to share it or not. This does not mean that the methods used by them to structure and organize the information produced or simply used are necessarily efficient and effective. Terms that do not reflect the actual indexed informational content are used. Still, in this user's view, their way of organization is the most convenient and appropriate. Given these findings, the following question is asked, how to ensure that information retrieval is performed properly and accurately? Are there methods and techniques for treating, structuring and organizing information on the web? It is necessary to seek understanding of the user's motivation when assigning tags to an informational object, such as the use of keywords to represent content, in order to facilitate its organization and retrieval (Social Classification). This research aims to identify how information is represented and retrieved via hashtags assigned by users in social networks; check how users have hashtags tagged in posts on three popular social networks: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and identify the advantages and disadvantages of using hashtags on social networks. The problem of the work is to verify how hashtags are used to represent and retrieve information on social networks and contribute to it. This is an exploratory and descriptive research, given the need to dig deeper into the theme and problem, to better understand the subject. Given the aspects observed in this research, it can be concluded that hashtags effectively assist in the classification, representation and retrieval of information in social networks. When tagging is well-defined prior to sharing information or content, there is a much greater chance of retrieval as well as use by others. This study aims to contribute theoretically to the literature of the area and is also expected to facilitate the performance of information professionals in such domain.