Information Seeking Behavior of Health Professionals Encountering COVID-19 Crisis and Analyzing the Content of Messages Sent on Social Media

Vakili, Mohammad Ali, Paranam, Zohreh, Talebi Gorgani, Razieh, Kolbadinejad, Komeil, Amirkhanlou, Mehdi and Mohammadi, Masoud Information Seeking Behavior of Health Professionals Encountering COVID-19 Crisis and Analyzing the Content of Messages Sent on Social Media. Informology, 2022, vol. 1, n. 1, pp. 75-84. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[thumbnail of information seeking behavior of health professionals encountering COVID-19.pdf]
Preview
 Text
information seeking behavior of health professionals encountering COVID-19.pdf
Download (721kB) | Preview

English abstract

Objective: Social media today is one of the important media for informing epidemics. This study identifies the information-seeking behavior of health professionals and analyzes the content of messages sent on the WhatsApp social network. Materials and Methods: This is a case study and content analysis research done using the descriptive-analytical method. Its statistical population was all the messages exchanged in WhatsApp groups of health professionals of Golestan University of Medical Sciences during the coronavirus crisis. The content analysis method of the exchanged messages in the studied groups was used to collect the data. During the analysis, 1339 messages were entered into the study. The data were then clustered, coded, and classified based on the available messages. Results: More than 20% of the messages presented were in the COVID-19 prevention category. Also, among the presented sub-topics, the COVID vaccine, with 4.93% of the total messages, had attracted the most attention from subject experts. Only 14.71% of the messages were provided with reference to a specific source, and the other messages were personal comments or non-source topics. Conclusion: Methods of preventing COVID-19 infection continue to be at the forefront of the attention of health professionals, and the focus of these experts is on the topics presented in this area. Web-based platforms such as websites and social networks also play a very important role in meeting the information needs of researchers, especially in the field of COVID-19, and therefore, attention to the provision of scientific and approved content on the Web is very important.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: COVID-19, Information seeking behavior, Social media, Health professionals
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information > BH. Information needs and information requirements analysis.
Depositing user: Dr. Alireza Noruzi
Date deposited: 26 Sep 2022 23:24
Last modified: 26 Sep 2022 23:24
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/43588

References

Allington, D., Duffy, B., Wessely, S., Dhavan, N., & Rubin, J. (2021). Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological medicine, 51(10), 1763-1769.

Andreadakis, Z., Kumar, A., Román, R. G., Tollefsen, S., Saville, M., & Mayhew, S. (2020). The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape. Nature reviews. Drug discovery, 19(5), 305-306.

Braun, L. A., Zomorodbakhsch, B., Keinki, C., & Huebner, J. (2019). Information needs, communication and usage of social media by cancer patients and their relatives. Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology, 145(7), 1865-1875.

Cameron, D., Sheth, A. P., Jaykumar, N., Thirunarayan, K., Anand, G., & Smith, G. A. (2014). A hybrid approach to finding relevant social media content for complex domain specific information needs. Journal of web semantics, 29, 39-52.

Ghanbari, Z., Yousefi Nejad, M., Jafari Navimipour, N., & Hosseinzadeh, M. (2019). Detection of Twitter Users' Attitudes about Flu Vaccine based on the Content and Sentiment Analysis of the Sent Tweets. Journal of Health and Biomedical Informatics, 5(4), 494-481.

Haustein, S., Peters, I., Sugimoto, C. R., Thelwall, M., & Larivière, V. (2014). Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(4), 656-669. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23101

Jaremko, K. M., Schwenk, E. S., Pearson, A. C., Hagedorn, J., Udani, A. D., Schwartz, G., . . . Mariano, E. R. (2019). Teaching an old pain medicine society new tweets: integrating social media into continuing medical education. Korean journal of anesthesiology, 72(5), 409.

Kazemi, Z. (2004). Investigating the information seeking behavior of professors, assistants and interns of Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences. Health information management, 1(2), 7-14.

Kim, Y., Kim, M., & Kim, K. (2010). Factors Influencing the Adoption of Social Media in the Perspective of Information Needs. Paper presented at the iConference 2010, Illinois https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/15000 Lie, D. A., & Boker, J. (2006). Comparative survey of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) attitudes, use, and information-seeking behaviour among medical students, residents & faculty. BMC medical education, 6(1), 1-6.

Mabera, S. U. (2021). Information needs and search behaviour of students of veterinary medicine in a Nigerian university. Journal of Library Services and Technologies, 3(1), 1-12.

McNeill, A., Harris, P. R., & Briggs, P. (2016). Twitter influence on UK vaccination and antiviral uptake during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Frontiers in Public Health, 4, 26.

Nasrollahzadeh, S. (2015). Health Information-Seeking Behavior of Pregnant Women: A Grounded Theory Study. Human Information Interaction, 1(4), 270-281.

Raynor, D. K., Savage, I., Knapp, P., & Henley, J. (2004). We are the experts: people with asthma talk about their medicine information needs. Patient education and counseling, 53(2), 167-174.

Reycraft, K., & Whiteman, G. (2020). Information Sources in Environmental Science: A Citation Analysis of Master’s Theses at Florida Gulf Coast University. Science & Technology Libraries, 39(4), 395-413.

Saenger, A. K., Berkwits, M., Carley, S., Haymond, S., Ennis-O'Connor, M., Sherbino, J., & Smith, S. W. (2018). The power of social media in medicine and medical education: Opportunities, risks, and rewards. Clinical chemistry, 64(9), 1284-1290.

Springer, S., Menzel, L. M., & Zieger, M. (2020). Google Trends provides a tool to monitor population concerns and information needs during COVID-19 pandemic.

Terrasse, M., Gorin, M., & Sisti, D. (2019). Social Media, e‐Health, and Medical Ethics. Hastings Center Report, 49(1), 24-33.

Timimi, F. K. (2012). Medicine, morality and health care social media. BMC medicine, 10(1), 83.

Velavan, T. P., & Meyer, C. G. (2020). The COVID‐19 epidemic. Tropical medicine & international health, 25(3), 278.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
Contact us
Send email Sponsors
Sponsor: AIMS Sponsor: D&P Sponsor: UniNa CAB Get connected
Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Linkedin LinkedIn RSS RSS