Digital Information Seeking and Sharing Behavior During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Mehak Fatima (1, 2), Aimal Rextin (1, 3), Mehwish Nasim (4),, Osman Yusuf (1) ((1) Asthma, Allergy Institute Pakistan, (2) Department of, Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Lahore, Gujrat, Campus, Gujrat, Pakistan, (3) Department of Computer Science

TL;DR
This study analyzes Pakistani users' digital information-seeking and sharing behaviors during the first COVID-19 wave, revealing patterns of active engagement, waning interest, and responses to novel events to inform future health communication strategies.
Contribution
It provides novel insights into how the Pakistani public engaged with COVID-19 information via Google and WhatsApp during the pandemic's first wave.
Findings
Active information seeking at pandemic start
Interest waned over time and resurged with shocks
Implications for health policy and misinformation control
Abstract
People turn to search engines and social media to seek information during population-level events, such as during civil unrest, disease outbreaks, fires, or flood. They also tend to participate in discussions and disseminate information and opinions via social media forums, and smartphone messaging applications. COVID-19 pandemic was not any different. However, the proper medical awareness and correct information dissemination is critical during a pandemic. An unprecedented amount of internet traffic related to this topic was generated during the start of the pandemic all over the world. In this work, we have analysed the electronic data generated by users from Pakistan on Google Search Engine and WhatsApp to understand their information-seeking behavior during the first wave of the pandemic. The paper aims at analysing how the Pakistani public developed their understanding about the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMisinformation and Its Impacts · COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing
