ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 global pandemic has changed every facet of our lives overnight and has resulted in many challenges and opportunities. Utilizing the Lens of Vulnerability we investigate how disparities in technology adoption affect activities of daily living. In this paper, we analyze the existing literature and case studies regarding how the lifestyles of socially vulnerable populations have changed during the pandemic in terms of technology adoption. Socially vulnerable populations, such as racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, older adults, children, and the socially isolated, are specifically addressed because they are groups of people who have been significantly and disproportionately affected by the pandemic. This paper emphasizes that despite seeing changes in and research on technology adoption across healthcare, employment, and education, the impact of COVID-19 in government and social services and activities of daily living is underdeveloped. The study concludes by offering practical and academic recommendations and future research directions. Lessons learned from the current pandemic and an understanding of the differential technology adoption for activities of daily living amid a disaster will help emergency managers, academics, and government officals prepare for and respond to future crises.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we present a research agenda for longitudinal risk communication during a global pandemic. Starting from an understanding that traditional approaches to risk communication for epidemics, crises, and disasters have focused on short-duration events, we acknowledge the limitations of existing theories, frameworks, and models for both research and practice in a rapidly changing communication environment. We draw from scholarship in communication, sociology, anthropology, public health, emergency management, law, and technology to identify research questions that are fundamental to the communication challenges that have emerged under the threat of COVID-19. We pose a series of questions focused around 5 topics, then offer a catalog of prior research to serve as points of departure for future research efforts. This compiled agenda offers guidance to scholars engaging in practitioner-informed research and provides risk communicators with a set of substantial research questions to guide future knowledge needs.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Communicable Disease Control , Communication , Public Health , Risk Assessment , Attention , Humans , Motivation , Time Factors , TrustABSTRACT
Information pervades today's human activities, essentially making every sector of society an information environment. Due to the ubiquity of technological innovations and their interconnectivity, there is no aspect of lives of individuals that has not been affected. Individuals & organizations use multiple devices and networking platforms to interact with each other, businesses, and governments, as well as to search, retrieve, and consume information. Adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the nature of information in general and its management and use have been topics of discussion at events such as the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. However, what is often lacking, if not missing, is a broader discussion about information and ICTs, in applied areas such as emergency management, homeland security, and cybersecurity.