Background

The plethora of information in the contemporary digital age is enormous and beyond the capability of the average person to process all the information received. During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, huge amount of information is increasingly available in digital information sources and overwhelms the average person. The purpose of this research was to investigate public’s information seeking behavior on COVID-19 in Greece.

Method

The study was conducted through a web-based survey, facilitated by the use of questionnaire posted on the Google Forms platform. The questionnaire consisted of closed-ended, 7-point Likert scale questions and multiple choice questions and was distributed to all over Greek Regions to almost 3.000 recipients, during the implementation of restrictive measures against the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020. The data collected were subjected to a descriptive statistical analysis. The median was used to present the results. In order to perform analysis between genders, as well as age groups, the non-parametric criteria Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis were applied to determine the existence of differences in participants’ beliefs.

Results

Responses by 776 individuals were obtained. Individuals dedicated up to 2 h per day to be informed on COVID-19. Television, electronic press and news websites were reported by the participants as more reliable than social media, in obtaining information on COVID-19. Respondents paid attention to official sources of information (Ministry of Health, Civil Protection etc.). Family and friends played an additional role in the participants’ information on COVID-19, while the personal doctor, other health workers and pharmacists did not appear to be most preferred sources of information on COVID-19. Participants’ most common information seeking strategy in digital environment was keyword searching. Unreliable information, fake news and information overload were the most common difficulties that the participants encountered seeking information on COVID-19. The respondents’ views seemed to differ significantly among age groups. The older the participants, the more often they were informed by television (p < 0.001) and the less often by the internet (p < 0.001). Females appear to use more frequently internet (p < 0.001) and social media (p = 0.001) out of habit and visit more often the Ministry of Health (p < 0.001) and the Civil Protection (p=0.005) websites, compared to males. Most of the participants seemed to worry about the fake news phenomenon and agreed that fake news on COVID-19 is being spread in the media and especially social networks.

Conclusion

The study revealed that, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece, participants obtained information about the disease mainly by television, electronic press and news websites. On the contrary, the limited use of social media demonstrates the participants awareness of the spread of fake news on social media. This observed information seeking behavior might has contributed to individuals’ acceptance of the necessary behavioral changes that had led to the Greek success story in preventing spread of the disease.

中文翻译：

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信息寻求行为与 COVID-19 大流行：希腊青年、中年和老年人的概况

背景

当代数字时代的信息数量巨大，超出了普通人处理所有收到信息的能力。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，数字信息源中的海量信息越来越多，让普通人不知所措。本研究的目的是调查希腊公众关于 COVID-19 的信息寻求行为。

方法

该研究是通过一项基于网络的调查进行的，并通过使用发布在 Google Forms 平台上的调查问卷来促进。该调查问卷由封闭式、7 点李克特量表问题和多项选择题组成，在 2020 年春季针对 COVID-19 疫情实施限制措施期间，向希腊各地近 3000 名接受者分发了调查问卷。收集的数据进行了描述性统计分析。使用中位数来呈现结果。为了在性别和年龄组之间进行分析，应用非参数标准 Mann-Whitney U 和 Kruskal-Wallis 来确定参与者信念是否存在差异。

结果

共收到 776 人的回复。个人每天花最多 2 小时来了解有关 COVID-19 的信息。参与者表示，在获取有关 COVID-19 的信息方面，电视、电子新闻和新闻网站比社交媒体更可靠。受访者关注官方信息来源（卫生部、民防部等）。家人和朋友在参与者提供有关 COVID-19 的信息方面发挥了额外作用，而私人医生、其他卫生工作者和药剂师似乎并不是最受青睐的有关 COVID-19 的信息来源。参与者在数字环境中最常见的信息搜索策略是关键词搜索。不可靠的信息、虚假新闻和信息过载是参与者在寻找有关 COVID-19 的信息时遇到的最常见的困难。不同年龄段受访者的观点似乎存在显着差异。参与者年龄越大，他们通过电视获得信息的频率越高（p < 0.001），而通过互联网获得信息的频率就越低（p < 0.001）。与男性相比，女性似乎出于习惯更频繁地使用互联网（p < 0.001）和社交媒体（ p = 0.001），并且更频繁地访问卫生部（p < 0.001）和民防（p = 0.005）网站。大多数参与者似乎对假新闻现象感到担忧，并同意有关 COVID-19 的假新闻正在媒体尤其是社交网络中传播。

结论

研究显示，在希腊COVID-19大流行期间，参与者主要通过电视、电子报和新闻网站获取有关该疾病的信息。相反，社交媒体的有限使用表明参与者对社交媒体上虚假新闻传播的认识。这种观察到的信息寻求行为可能有助于个人接受必要的行为改变，从而导致了希腊在预防疾病传播方面的成功故事。