A New Article on Web Search Queries to be Published

A New Article on Web Search Queries to be Published

The new article, coauthored by Jie Qin and Winson, entitled “Googling Environmental Issues: Web Search Queries as a Measurement of Public Attention on Environmental Issues”, will appear in Internet Research. Web search queries, or web queries or search queries or online search queries (hereinafter “queries”), refer to the words or the combination of multiple words and/or symbols that individuals enter into an online search engine for expected search results. Queries as a pioneering measure of public attention on various social issues have elicited considerable scholarly attention since the launch of Google Flu Trends in 2008. The study uses public attention on environmental issues in the USA as the empirical setting of research and aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) How do we identify niche queries that Internet users search for on specific social issues? (2) What are the measurement properties of queries data in gauging public attention on social issues? Internet Research is an interdisciplinary journal indexed in both SCI and SSCI. Its impact factor in 2013 is 1.638, which is ranked Q2 among journals in three subject categories (i.e., Computer Science Information Systems, Telecommunications, and Business). (QJ)