Making Sense of Risk Information amidst Uncertainty: Individuals’ Perceived Risks Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic
Date
2021
Authors
Pine, Kathleen
Lee, Myeong
Whitman, Samantha A.
Chen, Yunan
Henne, Kate
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Abstract
During a global pandemic such as COVID-19, laypeople bear a large burden of responsibility for assessing risks associated with COVID19 and taking action to manage risks in their everyday lives, yet epidemic-related information is characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. People perceive risks based on partial, changing information. We draw on crisis informatics research to examine the multiple types of risk people perceive in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, the information sources that inform perceptions of COVID-19 risks, and the challenges that people have in getting the information they need to understand risks, using qualitative interviews with individuals across the United States. Participants describe multiple pandemic-related threats, including illness, secondary health conditions, economic, socio-behavioral, and institutional risks. We
further uncover how people draw on multiple information sources from technological infrastructures, people, and spaces to inform the types of their risk perceptions, uncovering deep challenges to acquiring needed risk information.
Description
Keywords
Crisis informatics, risk perception, information seeking, health information, COVID-19
Citation
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Source
CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Type
Conference paper
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Restricted until
2099-12-31
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