Sources of information in times of health crisis: evidence from Turkey during COVID-19
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Sources of information in times of health crisis: evidence from Turkey during COVID-19 Ekmel Geçer 1
&
Murat Yıldırım 2,3
&
Ömer Akgül 1
Received: 6 June 2020 / Accepted: 5 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Aim Media as a source of information can shape public opinion regarding the COVID-19 response. Identifying how and where people seek information during the COVID-19 outbreak is vital to convey the most effective message about managing the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this study was to determine the sources of information and investigate the role of various demographic factors—age, gender, educational attainment and perceived economic level—on sources of information. Subject and methods An online survey (n = 4624) was conducted on Turkish public during the early stages of the COVID-19. Results The results showed that internet journalism and social media were the most preferable sources of information. Higher age, educational attainment and economic level were related to higher levels of seeking information from TV, newspaper, internet journalism and informative meetings. Females obtained information more from their friends and family and social media than males. High school graduates or below watched more TV and obtained less information from internet journalism, while university graduates sought information from their families and friends, and postgraduates attended informative meetings and read newspapers. People with medium and high economic status, respectively, watched more TV and read more newspapers, while people with low socioeconomic status attended informative meetings less. Conclusion In sum, this study provides evidence that a source of information might be influenced by demographic factors. Researchers and policymakers can use a source of information to develop crisis-response strategies by considering variations in the demographic factors. Keywords COVID-19 . Coronavirus . Source of information . Demographic factors . Turkey
The world is currently under the threat of the fast spreading novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO 2020a) reported many pneumonia cases from Wuhan city in China. On 12 December 2019, the first case of the COVID-19 epidemic was reported with unexplained pneumonia, and on December 31, 2019, 27 viral pneumonia cases, with seven being severe, were
* Murat Yıldırım [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Hamidiye Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Health Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey
2
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Letters, Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University, Erzurum Yolu 4 Km 04100, Merkez, Ağrı, Turkey
3
Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
officially announced (Sahin et al. 2020). After spreading country-wide, on 13 January 2020, the disease crossed Chinese borders and was seen in Thailand. From that time, COVID-19 exponentially spread to more than 185 countrie
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