Health Information Seeking Behaviour, Risk Communication, and Mobility During COVID-19
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Authors
Schoenherr, Jordan Richard
Thomson, Robert
Issue Date
2020-11-12
Type
Conference presentations, papers, posters
Language
Keywords
COVID-19 , Correlation , Decision Making , Search Engine , Social Networking , Cognition , Health-Seeking Behavior , Mental Model
Alternative Title
Abstract
The existence of physical and financial barriers in the provision of healthcare leads to an increasing recognition that alternative sources of information are being used to supplement or replace the advice of healthcare professionals. Internet search engines are a common means to obtain health information. However, information, misinformation, and disinformation are all available concurrently, leaving health information seekers to distinguish these categories of information. Following a review of theories directly and indirectly related to health information-seeking behaviour (HISB), we examine how public announcements made by credible sources (e.g., health professionals and politicians) in varying geographic regions (globally, nationally (Canada), and regionally (New York State) influenced both HISB (represented by Google Searches) and whether this influences human behaviour (represented by Google Mobility Data). Across these analyses, we demonstrate that there are strong correlations between information search behaviour and mobility around the time of public health announcements suggesting that, directly or indirectly, health communication was associated with changes in individual behaviour.
Description
Citation
J. R. Schoenherr and R. Thomson, "Health Information Seeking Behaviour, Risk Communication, and Mobility During COVID-19," 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), Tempe, AZ, USA, 2020, pp. 283-289, doi: 10.1109/ISTAS50296.2020.9462203.
Publisher
IEEE