Evolution of Information Needs based on Life Event Experiences with Topic Transition

We propose a method to clarify the evolution of users' information needs related to a user's interests and actions based upon life events such as "childbirth." First, we extract topic transitions using dynamic topic models from blogs posted by users who have experienced life events. Next, we select the topics by computing the differences in topic probabilities before and after the life event. We evaluated our method based on three life events: "childbirth," "finding employment," and "marriage." Our method selected life event-relevant topics such as "child development," "working life," and "wedding ceremony." We found mothers' information needs such as "how to introduce baby food," employees' information needs such as "preparing an induction programme," and couples' information needs such as "wedding reception planning" in each topic.