ABSTRACT
Excessive news consumption during global crises (e.g., through regularly monitoring fast-moving developments), can result in information fatigue and anxiety. Indeed, research has highlighted dangerous risks to mental wellbeing from "over-consumption” of Covid-related news. While prior research has examined how people find Covid-related information and sometimes avoid it to prevent overwhelm, no existing studies have investigated how people leverage information seeking, encountering and avoidance (often in concert) to self-regulate their Covid news consumption. We conducted a two-week diary study and follow-up interviews with 16 people. An inductive Thematic Analysis identified several strategies for self-regulating Covid news consumption: short-term avoidance of all Covid news, selective avoidance (e.g., of news on particular Covid topics), selective consumption of Covid news from particular sources, news perceived to be within one's control, or news likely to be of personal benefit and conscious consumption of Covid news by limiting time spent consuming it, relying on passively encountering (rather than actively seeking) it and consuming it less frequently by returning to pre-pandemic news-browsing routines. An understanding of Covid news self-regulation strategies can help digital platforms that provide crisis-related news better support people in regulating their information consumption more effectively which, in turn, can help safeguard their mental wellbeing. 85th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology ;Oct. 29 – Nov. 1, 2022 ;Pittsburgh, PA. Author(s) retain copyright, but ASIS&T receives an exclusive publication license.
ABSTRACT
Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in the number of people seeking online support and information, particularly on social media. Nevertheless, the nature and trend of internet information, as well as its accuracy, are questionable. This study aimed to assess and compare the content, type/form, and degree of accuracy of breastfeeding information on Facebook before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 288/phase). Methodology The data were gathered from Malaysian public and group/page Facebook posts (n = 456). Keyword searches were conducted using Malay and English breastfeeding terms. The dataset was screened and entered into a structured codebook. The Delphi approach was used to assess the accuracy of posts' content performed by breastfeeding experts. Results Sharing personal experience (53.2%) was the most common topic in breastfeeding-related posts, followed by seeking questions (39.3%) and knowledge (8.0%). Sharing personal stories and knowledge posts were higher during COVID-19 than before (p = 0.001), although the seeking questions category was higher before the pandemic (p = 0.001). Most information posted was in text form (94.5%). About half of the posts (46.5%) were misleading, while (43.7%) were accurate. There was a significant difference in the accuracy of online posts before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (p = 0.001). Conclusions Compared to the pre-pandemic phase, forms/types of information on Facebook remained consistent, whereas the breastfeeding information content and its degree of accuracy differed during the pandemic.We need to explore other aspects of breastfeeding online content as well as its engagement, especially during a pandemic. Knowing the infant feeding-related topics that have been discussed and questioned on social media, as well as the accuracy of the data, allows policymakers and scientific communities to plan strategies for spreading credible breastfeeding information online. This includes creating interactive online media types of visual guidelines, web resources, and breastfeeding apps.
ABSTRACT
This is a complete evidence-based practice paper. The current COVID-19 global pandemic has required educators to pioneer online instruction even as they deliver it. This shift has particularly impacted first-year programs, in which training engineering students to find reliable information is fundamental to their professional development and ABET and CEAB accreditation criteria. Typically, information seeking is taught in person so that instructors and librarians can directly observe and guide student behavior, a practice still evolving but well-established by research. However, the effects of online information-seeking training and the sudden transition on students' learning are very poorly understood. Even less is known about the use of asynchronous instructional methods. This paper significantly enhances existing knowledge by directly examining the efficacy of in-person and asynchronous online instructional modalities. For 60 students in a mandatory engineering-communication course, we deployed an enhanced online baseline-assessment exercise to understand students' existing information-seeking behavior. Librarians then deployed an asynchronous online lesson to teach engineering research practices, critical evaluation, and information literacy. We evaluated the extent to which the online lesson impacted student information-seeking behavior and compared it to existing data from the prior year's classroom version. Our results demonstrate that the asynchronous learning module significantly enhanced the students' critical evaluation of sources and student outcomes were comparable with results in the previous synchronous course. These results have dramatic implications for how we understand students' baseline information-seeking behaviors, pedagogical design to bring about meaningful changes in students' use of sources, and how course design can incorporate effective asynchronous online delivery in diverse models. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021