An experimental study of social tagging behavior and image content

Social tags have become an important tool for improving access to online resources, particularly non-text media. With the dramatic growth of user-generated content, the importance of tags is likely to grow. However, while tagging behavior is well studied, the relationship between tagging behavior and features of the media being tagged is not well understood. In this paper, we examine the relationship between tagging behavior and image type. Through a lab-based study with 51 subjects and an analysis of an online dataset of image tags, we show that there are significant differences in the number, order, and type of tags that users assign based on their past experience with an image, the type of image being tagged, and other image features. We present these results and discuss the significant implications this work has for tag-based search algorithms, tag recommendation systems, and other interface issues.