TY - GEN
T1 - Understanding University Students’ Health Information Seeking Behaviours on Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic
T2 - 9th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2022
AU - Pyae, Aung
AU - Nikou, Shahrokh
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 pandemic is considered the worst global health crisis in the 21st century that caused unprecedented disruption to many sectors around the world (e.g. education, business, and tourism). Misinformation on social media is one of the major issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, which must be carefully considered. To address this issue, people’s health information-seeking behaviours play an important role to access accurate and reliable information on social media. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire-based study in Myanmar, which is one of the developing countries according to the United Nations to understand university students’ health information-seeking behaviours on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that social media plays a vital role to spread reliable and accurate information during the pandemic. The role of governments and authorities is also important to effectively use social media platforms (e.g. Facebook) to reach out to the public so that they can spread timely and accurate information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, users need to assess and verify the credibility of information related to pandemics on social media when they seek health-related information. This study suggests opportunities for further research in health information seeking on social media.
AB - According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 pandemic is considered the worst global health crisis in the 21st century that caused unprecedented disruption to many sectors around the world (e.g. education, business, and tourism). Misinformation on social media is one of the major issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, which must be carefully considered. To address this issue, people’s health information-seeking behaviours play an important role to access accurate and reliable information on social media. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire-based study in Myanmar, which is one of the developing countries according to the United Nations to understand university students’ health information-seeking behaviours on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that social media plays a vital role to spread reliable and accurate information during the pandemic. The role of governments and authorities is also important to effectively use social media platforms (e.g. Facebook) to reach out to the public so that they can spread timely and accurate information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, users need to assess and verify the credibility of information related to pandemics on social media when they seek health-related information. This study suggests opportunities for further research in health information seeking on social media.
KW - COVID-19 pandemic
KW - Health information-seeking Behaviour
KW - Social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85136955720&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-14832-3_7
DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-14832-3_7
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85136955720
SN - 9783031148316
T3 - Communications in Computer and Information Science
SP - 94
EP - 111
BT - Well-Being in the Information Society
A2 - Li, Hongxiu
A2 - Li, Chenglong
A2 - Ghorbanian Zolbin, Maehed
A2 - Krimmer, Robert
A2 - Kärkkäinen, Jukka
A2 - Suomi, Reima
PB - Springer
Y2 - 25 August 2022 through 26 August 2022
ER -