key: cord-0771524-67vgufre authors: Wu, Shuheng title: Understanding New Yorkers' Everyday Life Information Seeking Behavior in the Context of Coping with COVID‐19 date: 2021-10-13 journal: Proc Assoc Inf Sci Technol DOI: 10.1002/pra2.591 sha: 1e9e6ddc7d12b26ecd00e72e14e21d7beaa1c083 doc_id: 771524 cord_uid: 67vgufre This poster presents preliminary findings of a study which examines New Yorkers' everyday life information seeking (ELIS) behavior in the context of coping with COVID‐19. Based on semi‐structured interviews with 10 New Yorkers, this study identified 15 major categories of everyday life information needs, and developed a typology of New Yorkers' preferred ELIS sources. These typologies show New Yorkers' specific ELIS behavior during the pandemic, such as actively seeking information regarding grocery shopping and delivery, health safety guidelines, and current events. Social media became a popular source for immediate, local, and relevant information in New Yorkers' daily lives. These findings could form a knowledge base to inform the development of information services to assist residents of large urban areas in coping with public health crises. COVID-19 is a contagious disease that has spread across the world since the initial outbreak in late 2019. New York City (NYC) was an early epicenter of COVID-19, with a peak in cases between March and May 2020 (Thompson et al., 2020) . As a result of this public health threat, New Yorkers have faced numerous everyday life problems such as unemployment, business shutdowns, and racism. In response to this pandemic, New Yorkers employ different strategies to cope with it. Seeking information in their daily lives is one of these strategies. Savolainen (2004) defined everyday life information seeking (ELIS) as "the acquisition of various informational elements, which people employ to orient themselves in daily lives or to solve problems not directly connected with the performance of professional tasks or full-time study" (p. 156). Prior research has investigated ELIS behavior among different groups of people in various contexts. To the best of the author's knowledge, no prior studies have examined New Yorkers' ELIS behavior in the context of coping with COVID-19. This exploratory study aims to understand how New Yorkers seek, use, and share everyday life information while coping with the pandemic. Specifically, this poster reports preliminary findings on two research questions: (a) What are New Yorkers' everyday life information needs in the context of coping with COVID-19? (b) What ELIS sources do New Yorkers favor when coping with COVID-19? Answers to these questions could form a knowledge base to inform the development of information services and intervention programs to assist residents of large urban areas in coping with public health crises. The author conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 10 people residing in NYC during the outbreak of COVID-19. Convenience and snowball sampling techniques were used to identify and recruit participants. The author developed an interview protocol and an initial coding scheme based on Savolainen's (1995) ELIS model, Dervin's (1976) taxonomy of average citizens' everyday information needs, Agosto and Hughes-Hassell's (2005) topology of ELIS sources, and a literature analysis. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with NVivo 11. Based on Dervin's (1976) taxonomy, this study identified 15 major categories (with 68 subcategories) of New Yorkers' everyday life information needs (see Table 1 ). When asked how their daily information needs differed before and during the pandemic, nine participants noted that they were actively seeking information regarding grocery shopping and delivery services, especially during the beginning of the pandemic. For example, P08 explained, "the pandemic has changed the way that we shop…we do a lot of shopping online. I find that shopping is definitely, like grocery shopping especially, is an important information need during the pandemic." Other emerging information needs raised by participants were related to COVID tests, vaccines, and health safety guidelines. P03 described his information seeking process of determining whether specific hand soap met CDC's guidelines: Unlike other participants, P01 did not actively seek health information during the pandemic as "just walking around the city, taking the subway, I encounter public health information…It's just passively acquired." Although most participants expressed a greater need for news and COVID-related information, three of them indicated that this need became less intensive with time. P02 even tried to avoid this information: At the beginning like in March [2020], I paid a lot of attention to the numbers, like how many cases were confirmed every day…but that didn't last long because you got tired and you become almost like numb. So, I just stopped following these…and even stopped paying attention to news…kind of intentionally avoiding. Information needs related to indoor entertainment were more important than before the pandemic. P08 explained, "because we're indoors so much…you need a bit of leisure to get away from the bad news or the grave news about what's happening with the pandemic…you need that escapism every now and again." As the pandemic progressed, two participants began to seek information on outdoor leisure activities, such as "places doing outdoor movies" (P07). This study developed a typology of New Yorkers' preferred ELIS sources (see Table 1 ) consisting of four facets: interpersonal sources, traditional media, web-based sources, and formal organizations. Breaking from the websites of traditional media and government agencies like CDC, social media became popular ELIS source during the pandemic. Participants attributed this popularity to different reasons and conditions. For example, P01 followed the CDC and some news sites on Twitter as she felt like "any important news would come out immediately on Twitter, and then the actual information would come out later." Both P05 and P06 were freelancers and mothers who preferred to search Facebook local groups for the convenience of getting local grocery and childcare information. P07 revealed: Once the Black Lives Matter movement hit in June [2020], I really took a sharp left turn to Twitter for all of my news and guidelines because of the lack of reporting on what was really happening in New York on news outlets…Even with the vaccine rollout, the way I found my locations was through Twitter…the reasons I was seeking out so much information on social media was because these were New Yorkers who were living like me…I trust their very specific recommendations above a more generalized source like CNN or the CDC. Besides popular social media like Facebook and YouTube, four participants were Chinese immigrants who also used Chinese social media (e.g., WeChat, Weibo) to seek and share information specifically on Chinese grocery shopping, discrimination, and hate crimes against Asians. Two of these participants, including one who earned a PhD in the U.S., cited language barriers as their reason for preferring information sources in Chinese. The typologies developed in this study show New Yorkers' specific ELIS behavior during COVID-19, such as actively seeking information regarding grocery shopping and delivery, health safety guidelines, and current events. As this study is limited with a small sample, more interviews will be conducted to expand and verify the preliminary findings. People, places, and questions: An investigation of the everyday life informationseeking behaviors of urban young adults The everyday information needs of the average citizen: A taxonomy for analysis Everyday life information seeking: Approaching information seeking in the context of "way of life Everyday life information seeking COVID-19 outbreak The author would like to express her appreciation to the New Yorkers who participated in the study. This research is supported by the PSC-CUNY Research Award (# 64263-00 52).