Flashback as an everyday life information source : A quantitative survey study about the use of Flashback Forum for everyday life information purposes among Swedish students

The somewhat controversial Swedish online discussion forum Flashback Forum (Flashback) is used by a large part of the Swedish population and contains large amounts of information with a wide diversity regarding subjects. Flashback is unique, not least with its focus on freedom of speech, and is often considered unreliable and questionable. However, the large amount of information stored enable the use of the forum as a source of everyday information, given the fact that the user remain critical in their approach to the information retrieved. It seems reasonable to assume that students also use Flashback for this reason; and they can be assumed to have certain experiences regarding searching for information and judging the trustworthiness of found information. The purpose of this essay is therefore to study how Swedish students use Flashback to search for and access information, and how they relate to this information. To study this some concepts from Reijo Savolainen’s theory of everyday information practices has been used, in which he takes a social phenomenological perspective to everyday life information seeking (ELIS). These concepts are information source horizons, information fields and pathways, and stock of knowledge. For the method a survey was used, which was distributed online during March 2020 mainly in different student groups on Facebook. The results showed that a majority of the respondents use Flashback to search for and access everyday information, which was mainly related to current crimes and suspects. The majority of the respondents retained a critical approach to the information and used it mainly to still their curiosity about cases mentioned on news sites or papers. This study shows that Flashback can – and is – used by students to retrieve everyday information, mainly because the sought for information is not available, or not openly available, elsewhere. This study also shows that despite Flashback’s questionable reliability, the nature of the forum, and the fact that most respondents had a relatively bad attitude towards the forum, Flashback has a great potential as a source for everyday information of minor importance, and for taking part of others’ experiences