The effects of internet filtering on users’ information-seeking behaviour and emotions
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-12-2016-0218 |
| Pages | 408-425 |
| Date | 17 July 2017 |
| Published date | 17 July 2017 |
| Author | Hamid R. Jamali,Pria Shahbaztabar |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
The effects of internet filtering on
users’information-seeking
behaviour and emotions
Hamid R. Jamali
School of Information Studies,
Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia, and
Pria Shahbaztabar
Department of Library and Information Studies,
Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between internet filtering, emotions
and information-seeking behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach –In total, 15 postgraduate students at an Iranian university participated
in the study which involved a questionnaire, search tasks with think aloud narratives, and interviews.
Findings –Internet content filtering results in some changes in the information-seeking behaviour of users.
Users who face website blocking use a variety of methods to bypass filtering, mostly by using anti-filter
software. Filtering encourages users to use channels such as social networking services to share resources
and it increases the use of library material by some of the users. Users who face filtering during their search
are more likely to visit more pages of results and click on more hits in the results, unlike users who do not
experience filtering who rarely go past the first page. Blocking users’access to content stimulates their
curiosity and they become more determined to access the content. In terms of the affective aspect, filtering
causes several negative emotions (e.g. anger, disgust, sadness and anxiety) and the main reason for these
emotions is not the inability to access information but the feeling of being controlled and not having freedom.
Research limitations/implications –The study was limited to a small number of postgraduate students
in social sciences and not generalisable to all user groups. The implication is that in countries where filtering
is used, libraries can play an important role in serving users and reducing users negative emotions, especially
if libraries can take advantage of technologies such as social media for their services.
Originality/value –This is first study to address the effects of internet filtering on information-seeking
behaviour and emotions. The study shows that internet filtering causes negative emotions and results in
some changes in information-seeking behaviour.
Keywords Iran, Emotions, Information behaviour, Internet filtering, Internet censorship,
Website blocking
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Internet filtering (also sometimes called website blocking or internet censorship) is a
mechanism designed to control online activity through filtering and blocking of particular
parts or features of the internet such as websites, search words or online communities
(Eriksson and Giacomello, 2009, p. 207). Although varying degrees of restrictions on internet
access might be used even in democratic developed countries such as France and Germany
(Mathrani and Alipour, 2010), internet content filtering is mostly used by ideological,
religious or totalitarian states. In fact, research shows that restrictive states that want to
maintain the status quo may benefit from using filtering practices (Wagner and Gainous,
2013). This explains why internet filtering has been mainly studied from a political
perspective and as a result we know about some of its political and social effects.
It negatively affects not only the expansion of ICTs but also civil liberties (Shirazi, 2010) and
it also has the potential to impede active youth citizenship even in countries such as the UK
(Trevorrow et al., 2005).
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 69 No. 4, 2017
pp. 408-425
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-12-2016-0218
Received 30 December 2016
Revised 1 April 2017
26 May 2017
Accepted 3 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
408
AJIM
69,4
Internet filtering can be also employed at the organisational level. Some hospitals may
have restrictions for internet use and some (e.g. Van Rhoads and Caplan, 2009) argue that
internet filtering in hospitals hinders psychiatric investigation and treatment as doctors, for
example, may need to look for background information on a patient who has committed
suicide. Public libraries in some countries use software to prevent access to illegal or
inappropriate materials (Bertot et al., 2008; Spacey et al., 2014, 2017), although the decision to
use filtering in libraries is mostly made by people other than librarians, such as external
IT staff (Brown and McMenemy, 2013).
Regarding internet filtering at a national level, one of the countries that extensively uses
filtering is Iran. The Iranian government uses sophisticated systems for extensive internet
filtering. Warf (2011) classifies countries’censorship in five categories from uncensored
(such as the USA) to light,moderate, severe, and worst internet censors, with Iran, China and
Vietnam in the worstcategory. The Iranian governmentclaims that it uses filteringto protect
the country’s national security against the corruption and immorality imposed by Western
countries and to prevent the use of pornography which is forbidden in Islamic culture.
However, oppositions argue thatICT filtering is implemented toserve the political agendas of
small but powerful Islamic elites in order to undermine citizens’capacities to pursue their
democratic goals (Shirazi and Greenaway, 2009). Iran uses a mix of sophisticated methods
for internet filtering, for example, using IP addresses and domain names to block subnets or
websites, and keywords or categories to target-specific content (Chaabane et al., 2014).
Social and political activists outside Iran constantly develop new software and solutions to
help people bypass internet filtering and the Iranian government also constantly updates its
systems to block those ways of bypassing filtering as well (Erdbrink, 2013).
No matter how sophisticated, no filtering method is perfect due to the diversity and
quantity of web content and precise filtering is impossible (Warf, 2011, p. 4). Keyword-based
censorship might produce some collateral damage as websites with no sensitive content
may be mistakenly blocked. For example, at some point the University of Bath’s website
(www.bath.ac.uk) was blocked in Iran. This mistake was fixed later. If Iranian users try to
visit a blocked website (such as BBCPersian.com) they are redirected to the peyvandha.ir
webpage. This page, which is a directory of links to “safe”Iranian websites such as news
and media and so on, tells users that the page they tried to visit is blocked. The page also
has options to enable users to request for a website to be filtered, or to be unblocked if they
think it should not be blocked based on the government’s policy. Peyvandha.ir is ranked
30 in Iran and 2,348 globally based on Alexa[1] data (based on the number of visits, as of
29 March 2017), which indicates the extent of filtering in Iran. Alexa data indicate that the
top site visited immediately before this site (the referral page) is Google.com (11.5 per cent),
which indicates that when Iranian users search, a considerable number of search results
they click on to visit are filtered. This in turn implies a potential impact that filtering could
have on the search and the information-seeking behaviour of users.
In addition to the way information is presented to users and the barriers they face in access,
other variables such as contextual factors also influence users’search and information-seeking
behaviour. Emotion is one of the important contextual factors that should be considered in
future user-centric and usable system design (Brave et al., 2005). Research shows that it is
critical to keep a user emotionally stable as a “human’s brain capability decreases con siderably,
down to the level of about 30 per cent of the normal state because a human becomes
emotionally unstable”(Fukuda, 2008). Previous studies indicate that blocking content that
users want to visit might impact on users’behaviour, for instance they might start using
anti-filter software or start new searches or change their search terms (Khattak et al., 2014).
We also know that there are relationships between search and information-seeking behaviour
and emotions (Kim, 2008; Lopatovska, 2014). However, we do not know what impact internet
filteringcan have on users’emotionsand information-seeking behaviourand what implications
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Effects of
internet
filtering
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