Language and Equilibrium
Understanding mobile web and mobile search use in today's dynamic mobile landscape
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
Health information accessed on the internet: the development in 5 European countries
International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications
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Health portals play an important role in today's health care, and the increased mobility places demands on the portals to provide as accurate and few suggestions as possible. Often the information seekers may be in distress, lacking medical knowledge and expressing themselves in ways that make it difficult for the portal to interpret the seekers' needs. This raises the question on how portal providers may be able both to better model, or describe, the user behaviour and to predict the impact of changes in search algorithms to address these challenges. This paper highlights some possibilities and benefits of a theoretic framework, based on existing works on game-theoretic treatments of information retrieval and communication, to allow for both descriptive and predictive analysis of internet-based health communication. This is especially important in the context of increased mobility, demanding more accurate and fewer interactions. We also elaborate on how one of the fundamental results of game theory on equilibria may be used as a basis for improved information search. Possibly counter-intuitive, this is done not by tweaking the portal, but instead by trying to change the seekers' behaviour towards passing more diversifying queries.