Attitudes towards Online Community Support Initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Survey in the UK

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed unexpected hardship on the health, environment, economic, and social-political governance of the entire human population. Local communities have adopted new ways of communicating and connecting to support each other. This paper reports people's attitudes towards online community support initiatives (OCSIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic based on a survey conducted in the UK. Our analysis of responses from 699 participants suggests the increased use of social media sites and OCSI engagement since the pandemic, and that people had positive attitudes towards the OCSIs, but improvements were still required. We suggest four design implications to alleviate the challenges of using OCSIs. © 2022 ACM.