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170 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

and methods with computational characteristics.
CIA has its own thinking and ideas. Quantitative thinking is to abstract quantitative mathematical
forms from objective things and phenomena. Automatic thinking is to transform data and analysis
method in a form that can be processed by a computer. Integrative thinking places an importance
on the relevance of different data sources. By fusing multiple data sources, it is possible to not
only reveal correlations but also complement or cross-validate using different kinds of data. Fault-
tolerance thinking means that precision loss at a micro-level and a certain amount of errors and
confusions is tolerable.
Finally, this paper raises research topics which deserve more attention under different
perspectives, i.e. theory, method and technique, system, and application practice, including but not
limited to: constructing a theory of data advanced analytics based on the integration of information
science theory and related disciplines, discussing on automatic implementation and improvement
of different information analysis methods in CIA, designing an intelligence analysis system within
task-data-method which is interrelated, combining with new computing technology or multiple
data sources for deep data content mining, etc.

Refining the structure and process of social search behavior: An activity
theory perspective

SUN Xiaoning, ZHAO Yuxiang & ZHU Qinghua〇
〇a*
As a way of searching information in the social context, social search has the characteristics of
complexity and diversity, and it shows great differences from traditional Web search. In terms of
the prior studies on social search behaviors, great challenges are inevitable and further explanations
are still needed both from the systematic overview and the logical construction view. Activity
Theory has a rich theoretical vocabulary which is open and extensible. It can help us synthetically
analyze the basic elements such as user, system as well as information, and build an integrated
conceptual system or theoretical framework from the perspective of Ontology. Therefore, this
paper draws on Activity Theory lens to explore the structure and process of social search behavior.
This paper reviews the research progress of social search from the perspective of information
behavior, the development process of Activity Theory and its main applications in the Library
and Information Science domain. Based on these factors, the paper focuses on the analysis of
element, system and hierarchy structures of social search behavior, as well as its cognition and
task execution processes. From a static-microcosmic point of view, firstly, social search behavior
involves six elements, namely subject (searcher), object (question), community, tool (search
platform), rule/norm, division of labor (role). Among them, subject, object and community are core

* Correspondence should be addressed to ZHU Qinghua, Email: qhzhu@nju.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0002-4879-399X