Exploring information seeking of rural older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic

Exploring Information Seeking of Rural Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic Brady D. Lund and Jinxuan Ma ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION IN ASLIB JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Abstract Purpose. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the types and sources of information sought by older adults along with their motivations in the Midwestern United States. Design. Interviews were conducted with 30 older adults residing in rural communities around the Midwestern United States during late-summer (July/August) 2020, using a protocol based on Dervin’s Sense-Making approach. The resulting data was analyzed using standard content analysis procedures, guided by the theoretical framework based on Dervin’s Sense Making and Williamson’s Ecological Model of Information Behavior. Implications of COVID-19 for the normative behaviors described in these models is discussed. Findings. Findings show that older adults were concerned primarily with health and political information during this period, but that this information was not necessarily sought only to address an informational need, but also to satisfy the need to maintain social and emotional connections in coping with isolation and loneliness. Sources of information that allowed for social interaction with people were favored. Wider personal networks (community members) were strained by the social distancing measures and closures. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for considering the impact of social restrictions on information seeking behaviors of older adults in a time of crisis. Originality. This study is the first, known to the authors, that applied the two adopted theoretical frameworks to explore information seeking behaviors of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the COVID-19 pandemic has posed life-threatening health risks to the pubic with older adults at highest level of vulnerability, face-to-face communication is less viable as a means to acquire information and severe outbreaks have left many older adults largely confined to their homes. Simultaneously, these individuals’ need for reliable information have reached unparalleled levels and multifarious misand disinformation has proliferated all forms of media. These situations may have coalesced to form a sense of information crisis, where vital information needs are left unfulfilled (Xie et al., 2020a; Xie et al., 2020b). A lack of quality information and (misand dis-) information overload may impact awareness of people’s world and their decision-making processes. This, in turn, could result in uninformed, even harmful, decisions that impact people’s mental, cognitive, and physical health, their financial and social well-being, and a lack of trust/confidence in political and societal authorities (Norris, 2001; Thompson, 2007). The purpose of this study is to investigate how rural older adults in the Midwestern United States have made sense of their information environments amid the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing Dervin’s Sense-Making approach in conjunction with an ecological theory of information behavior proposed by Kirsty Williamson (1997; 1998). This approach focuses on identifying where the pandemic has introduced barriers or gaps in rural older adults’ daily information seeking activities and understanding how individuals’ motivations influence their information seeking behaviors during this time. Identification of these barriers and gaps is key to alleviating unsatisfied information needs through improved information access and support. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted significant gaps in our understanding of information behavior of older adults in crises. The fundamental research problem that underpins this study is how have unknown factors surrounding a life-threatening public health crisis impacted the sources and types of information that older adults have sought. As Wilson (2000) suggests, information behavior––the information that an individual consumes and how they consume it––may influence other behaviors and beliefs that an individual holds. It is most likely that the pandemic has introduced a substantial shift in the motives and ways that individuals interact, seek, and use information. Individuals’ responses to the pandemic––whether to go out in public, wear a mask, and engage in hygienic activities––are potential life-or-death decisions, particularly among older adults, one of the most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the older adult population is examined infrequently in information behavior research (Julien, Pecoskie, & Reed, 2011). A better understanding of this populations’ information behavior will not only make a significant, novel contribution to the body of literature and library practice but knowing specifically about how their information behaviors have shifted during the pandemic has ramifications for natural disaster and other crisis research as well. Research Questions To address this research problem, the following overarching research question and four sub-questions were developed: • How have rural older adults sought to satisfy their information needs in the evolving COVID-19 pandemic landscape? o What types of information needs have emerged? o What role has the pandemic along with other contextualized (both personal and environmental) factors/influences played for these needs? o From what information sources have they sought to address these needs? o Have their information needs been satisfied during this period? Literature Review Information behavior of older adults The information use behavior of older adults has been studied in various contexts over the past several decades. Williamson (1999) suggested that the most common uses of information for older adults include for decision-making purposes, such as health, financial, and political information, to connect socially with others, to plan for future events (e.g., vacations or funeral) and to stay current with events occurring in the world. Williamson suggested that the specific uses of information and where this information is acquired is contingent on personal and environmental factors including institutions (e.g., nursing facilities, social services, libraries), mass media, social networks (e.g., friends, family), personal values, lifestyle, socio-economic status, employment status, and personal characteristics. Subsequent researchers proposed additional information uses among older adults, such as to support life reflection and sustain memory (i.e., searching for information about past life experiences) and for religious worship purposes (e.g., reading the bible) (Campbell et al. 2016; Komatsu et al. 2018; Palsdottir, 2012). Much of the existing information research related to older adults has occurred within the contexts where a large sample of these individuals is easy to find: nursing facilities. However, recruiting participants from nursing facilities may prove problematic for information research, given that less than 10% of adults age 65+ reside in these facilities (meaning that this sample is not representative of the “typical” older adult) (West et al. 2014), and the nature of living in close proximity to peers under the supervision of nurses and aids is likely to affect the information behaviors of older adults in ways that are distinct from older adults that reside independently (Palsdottir, 2012; Pettigrew, 2000). While the ubiquitous Internet connectivity and rapid technology advancements have helped to abate the digital divide to an extent, there is still a significant gap in the amount, relevance, and quality of information produced and accessible for older adults compared to other populations in the United States (Padilla-Gongora et al. 2017; Williamson 1998). As noted longitudinally by a collection of interdisciplinary researchers, older adults tend to be “laggard” or “late” adopters of new technologies using the diffusion terminology of Everett Rogers (Caceres & Chaparro 2019; Ferro et al. 2010; Gilly & Zeithaml 1985; Gonzalez, Ramirez, & Viadel 2012; Rogers 1986; Selwyn 2004; Vicente & Lopez 2006). This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that, historically, very little information has been created relevant to the information needs and uses of older adults (Baker 2004; Hales-Mabry 1993). While older adults have been adopting newer technologies, like social media, at faster rates than ever before, they still lag well behind the general (younger adult) population (Leist, 2013; Yang et al., 2016; Zhao & Zhang, 2017). This has left this population reliant on information sources that may be more restrictive (e.g., close family, friends, or television stations) and less reliable. This may have particularly important implications during the COVID-19 pandemic, where access to certain information resources (e.g., community members) was further restricted by social distancing and isolation guidelines. Existing information behavior studies of older adults were largely conducted in limited contexts. For example, many studies of this population utilized the context of assisted living centers, as it was easy to acquire a large number of participants simultaneously. Other studies focused on independent-living older adults, but only those living in moderate-to-large urban centers, as these were the types of cities where most research universities are located. This means that the rural context is often overlooked. Those studies that do examine the information behaviors of rural older adults almost unilaterally focused on health-related behaviors (Agyemang-Duah et al., 2020; Potter, Allen, & Roberto, 2019; Song et al., 2019; Wilyman, 2017). This is especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic, where few existing studies of older adults’ information behavior focus on COVID-specific behavior (Lachlan et al., 2021; Parial et al., 2021; Skarpa & Garoufallou, 2021; Xie et al., 2020c). This study intendeds to expand upon the limited past investigations to examine a range of rural older adults’ information behaviors during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Context factors and information behavior The influence of contextual factors on and in information seeking behaviors has been documented in many recent studies. Agarwal, Xu, and Poo (2011) demonstrated the role of context in source use by workers. Savolainen (2017) discusses how contexts surrounding the emergence of information need driven the manifestation of information seeking behavior. AlSamarrie, Eldenfria, and Dawoud (2017) examined how different personality traits influences information behavior. Several studies have also looked at how context factors impact health information behaviors of medical patients (Graffigna et al., 2017; Park, Oh, & You, 2020; Walker et al., 2017). These studies all illustrate an important influence of context on how information behaviors manifest, one that has traditionally been overlooking in research. In examining context of information behaviors in this study (the experiences of independentlyliving older adults in rural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic), it contributes to this growing body of literature. Studies of information sources during public health crises Several studies have analyzed information sources and needs during past pandemics. Wong and Sam (2010) analyzed information behavior among adults in Malaysia during the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. The most commonly utilized information sources among this population were newspapers, television, and family. This finding was compelling in light of Salman, Choy, Mahmud, and Latif’s (2013) identification that, by 2012, diffusion of Internet in Malaysia was nearly 100%, meaning that the use of these sources was a matter or preference or completeness more so than access. Wong and Sam (2010) did identify significant differences in source preference based on ethnicity. The researchers also noted that information about prevention and treatment of H1N1 was the most highly needed/valued. Majid and Rahmat (2013) also examined information behavior during the H1N1 pandemic, in their case using individuals living in Singapore as the population. Respondents in this study were asked to indicate how frequently they used a variety of information source to inform themselves about the pandemic. While all respondents indicated that they used some online resources, these were referenced less frequently than human and print and media sources. In fact, the top five sources consulted were television, newspapers, radio, friends, and family. Sharma, Yadav, Yadav, and Ferdinand (2017) highlight the emerging significance of an information source within their study of the Zika virus pandemic. The researchers raised serious concerns about Facebook as a source of information, finding that misleading or inaccurate posts were, on average, much more popular than reliable posts. This is certainly not a one-off case. Misinformation is frequently found to be rampant on social media platforms (Allcott, Gentzkow, & Yu, 2019; Mian & Khan, 2020; Pennycook, McPhetres, Zhang, Lu, & Rand, 2020). The rapid and widespread diffusion of misinformation on social media can be particularly harmful for populations with low or insufficient information literacy skills (Khan & Idris, 2019). Studying people’s information seeking behaviors amid the COVID-19 has become an urgent research topic in the latest LIS literature (Ali et al., 2020; Kelly, Goke, McCall, & Dowell, 2020; Li & Zheng, 2020; Moreno, Fuentes-Lara, & Navarro, 2020; Superio, 2020; Zimmerman, 2021). While some of these studies focus on older adults, only a handful to date have focused on older adults from a non-health-specific perspective. For example, Reisdorf et al. (2021) pointed out that older adults utilized conservative news media as an information source more frequently than younger adults, while younger adults used virtually all other types of information sources more frequently. Chu, Garza, Gerstoff, and Hoppmann (2020) found that older adults spent longer time seeking information. El Skarpa and Garoufallou (2021) examined the information sources consulted by different age groups, noting that older adults sought information more commonly from television and less frequently from the Internet relative to other age groups. These empirical studies, by and large, have been atheoretical with the aim of specific aspects of information behaviors (most commonly, sources of information). By expanding the phenomena to be studied (the information seeking process, types of information needs, sources, contexts) and employing a theoretical approach, the present study aims to further our understanding of the information behavior of rural older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic era. Theoretical Framework for this Study It is the position of the researchers in this study that a brand new theory of rural older adults’ pandemic information behaviors may not be necessary. Instead, there are existing theories we believe can be adapted to investigate this behavior. In the moment, it can seem like the COVID-19 pandemic is a “once-in-a-lifetime,” unique event, but, in reality, there are events that emulate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that occur frequently: some event that changes what the immediate information needs of individuals are, what sources are available, and how this information is sought (e.g., ecological disasters, other pandemics, emergency health and financial situations). What is really needed to describe information behavior during this pandemic period, then, is a theory that considers emergent, contextualized gaps in information, Methods Development of interview protocol As noted in the prior section, the qualitative interview protocol for this study was informed by Dervin’s (1998) Sense-Making Methodology. Nine questions, with a combined 14 sub-questions, were organized into four sections within the interview protocol, based on the categories of data we intended to collect: background information, situational factors that influence information seeking (lifestyles, physical environments, socioeconomic circumstances, values), types of needs or gaps (community, everyday life, family, financial, health, political, and where in the environment this information was found/bridging the need (personal network, wider network, institutional sources, mass media). The questions specifically targeted the types and sources of information that older adults have sought during the COVID-19 pandemic, how they settled on these sources, barriers to finding the information they need, incidents of unsuccessful information seeking, and how the pandemic has shifted their information ecology. The entire interview protocol is available as an appendix to this article. The interview questions were pre-tested with feedback focusing on streamlining the protocol and reducing the length of interviews to avoid participant fatigue. Consequently, the interview protocol was finalized and submitted and received institutional review board (IRB) approval at the researchers’ institution. Interviews were conducted in July and August of 2020. As noted in the interview protocol, the following definitions were used in this study, and guide the analysis of this study’s findings: Information types are different types information you might look for on a special topic or for a special purpose , like information about politics (or a specific political candidate), information about health issues (like the common cold), information about finances (like the stock market), etc.––for instance, “I use a lot of financial information about the stock market” Information need is the specific information that you need at a point in time––for instance, “I need information about the stock price for Walmart”. Information Seeking/Sought refers to the process of looking for information to address your information need––for instance, “Yesterday, I sought information about the stock price for Walmart”. Information sources are any source of information used by a person, like your television, a newspaper, a book, other people, the Internet––for instance, “I used the Internet to seek information about the stock price for Walmart”. This study’s coding scheme did not distinguish between online versus offline information sources (“mass media” includes television, print, and online news; “personal networks” includes face-to-face communication and Facebook chats or text messages). Nor did it distinguish whether certain information needs stated by participants directly referenced the COVID-19 pandemic. Information about a COVID-19 vaccine and information about surgical procedures during this period were both considered “health information,” because, despite variation, all of these information needs were impacted or related to the COVID-19 pandemic to some extent (e.g., surgical procedures/safety measures changed during the pandemic); this type of categorization also was not germane to the focus of the study, which was to examine information behavior during the COVID19 pandemic, not necessarily information behavior about the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants Characteristics Older adults, defined as individuals age 65+, living in rural communities––defined, for the purposes of this study, as a town with a population of under 25,000 and located at least 30 miles from any city with a population above 100,000––within the state of Kansas (United States) were the research subjects in this study. The sampling for the interviews was a mixture of convenient (advertising for participants within rural communities near the researchers’ university) and stratified approaches, to ensure that a diversity of backgrounds (education, marital status/family size, urban/suburban/rural) were represented within the data. Table 2 displays the demographic composition of the sample set. None of the participants in this study were related to one another (i.e., only one member of a married couple was allowed to participate, to avoid biasing findings without overlapping responses). Table 2. Demographics of Interview Participants Table 1. Demographics of Interview Participants Demographic Category Frequency Age 65-70 10 71-75 11 76-80 5 81+ 4 Gender Identity Female 11 Male 18 Not Specified/Nonbinary 1 Retirement Status Retired 17 Not Retired 8 Partial/Transition 5 Highest Level of Educational Attainment High School or Less 6 Some College 2 Associate’s Degree 3 Bachelor’s Degree 8 Graduate Degree 11 Relationship Status Single 5 In Relationship (Not Married) 1 Married 22 Widowed 2 Interview procedures Given the circumstances surrounding the ongoing pandemic, participants were offered a variety of formats in which to complete the interview: via phone, Zoom video conferencing software, email, or in-person (assuming no other options were feasible and proper social distancing could be maintained). Eight of the participants opted for a phone interview, seven chose to use Zoom to facilitate the interview, 14 participated in an email interview, and one preferred an in-person interview. In all cases, participants were asked to first answer each question as fully as possible and then share any additional thoughts or feedback that they had. For email interviews, follow-up emails were used if needed to clarify responses that were unclear. There are limitations with each of these interview methods, particularly the lack of paralingual cues (tone, eye contact) with email interviews, but the researchers used follow-ups to help mitigate these limitations, which were difficult to avoid given the pandemic conditions. Data analysis Following each interview, responses were transcribed to a secure Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, with access restricted to the researchers. The resulting data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. An analytical approach to content analysis was adapted from the work of Marshall and Rossman (2006): • Both researchers read all the survey responses to get a sense of the responses; then they re-read the data marking all direct responses to the research questions; • Responses were arranged into appropriate categories within the framework based on the definitions provided in the framework; • From the survey responses, instances of verbatim narrative were selected to help illustrate alignment with the categories and emerging patterns in the data. Intercoder reliability scores were calculated for the two coders, with a 96% level of agreement and a Cohen’s Kappa of .92, indicating a very high level of agreement. Findings Types of information sought As shown in Figure 2, the most named types of information that participants indicated they sought were health and political information. This was not particularly surprising, given that the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 United States Presidential election weighed heavily on society as a whole and in the mind of the participants (older adults) in particular at the time of the study. As one participant stated, “I’m kind of in the vulnerable population, as they say, so keeping up-to-date on the COVID is something that I try to do lately.” Political information was often also tied, to some extent, to the pandemic. As one participant noted, “I want to know how much (then-President) Trump is screwing things up.” However, there were others who sought information about election polling, primary debates, and specific political organizations (e.g., “The Lincoln Project” and “Republican National Convention”). Participants were considerably less likely to report other types of information needs like family or financial, but many still did so. For instance, one participant discussed a family trip that they had planned for over the summer––an “Alaskan cruise.” Given the state of the pandemic, the trip was cancelled by the cruise line, but customers were not given any instructions on how to receive a refund. The participant described several failed attempts at information seeking (web searching, asking family for assistance), before they finally decided to contact the travel company directly to get the information they needed. Contextually, the pandemic threw a lot of plans awry, creating situations (like the Alaskan cruise) where people were suddenly forced to search for information with only a limited understanding of where they could possibly go to find it. Figure 2. Types of Information Sought Compared to successfully sought information, there were few unsatisfied needs reported by participants. Among these, health was again the most prominent. The two unsatisfied health information needs that were most commonly reported related to the number of cases in a specific area (e.g., “what are the trends in the virus? How many people around here are dying?”) and the development of a vaccine (e.g., “I always keep an eye out for vaccine news”). Community information––that which pertains to events in one’s immediate community or social environment––was the second-most common unsatisfied need. With community information, the need was related more to a desire to feel connected than a “need to know,” as one participant said, “(I) feel less connected to the community, the people who used to be a big part of my life.” It was common among respondents to substitute a need for information for a need for connectedness, a need to satisfy emptiness, loneliness, isolation. This was a context that likely always existed to some extent, but was exacerbated by the pandemic conditions, where participants were, “more isolated from friends and neighbors.” Influences on information seeking In Figure 3, the influences behind why participants sought the types and sources they did are classified based on the categories of contextual factors identified in Williamson’s (1996) research. Socioeconomic circumstances were noted very little, owing, in part, to the fact that all participants in the study were retired and, generally, of a middle-class, “well-off” economic status. Even when looking for financial information about stocks, participants were more likely to claim that they were motivated by “general worry” or anxiety, or concern for others, like their “children.” This was true of even participants who were of lower socioeconomic status. The concern was often far less about oneself. Those with higher educational attainment were more likely to name multiple motivations for seeking information and have novel motives like “intellectual curiosity” and “research to write a book.” Figure 3. Influences on Seeking Information Personal characteristics, including characteristics like anxiety/uncertainty, boredom, educational attainment (participants with greater attainment sought more information) were the most common influence. Physical environments, the second most-commonly identified motivation, is characterized by direct interactions with one’s environment. During a non-COVID era, one’s environment may be a greater influence on where information is sought; however, considering social distancing restrictions, one’s environment was, in many cases, limited to one’s home and the “interfaces” (computer, books, television) to which they had immediate access. Restrictions on mobility due to COVID restrictions were commonly cited among participants. One participant, whose comments were representative of about a dozen peers, mentioned, “though I did not leave my house too much before COVID, I really looked forward to going to the store, church, and such. It was one of my few opportunities to socialize with other people.” Another participant noted that, “I am experiencing greater isolation now than ever before. I am now relying a lot on my family to share news of others (other people in the community).” Some participants were also driven by the clash between personal characteristics (outgoing, need to communicate) and physical environments (social distancing) to find and use information primarily for social purposes. They may not have a personal information need but may seize the opportunity to satisfy some communal need. For instance, one participant noted that a group of community members were looking for information about new residents in town: “(although) it wasn’t really important to me, I enjoyed helping to ask around on social media, because it gave me something to do and to catch up with some people I hadn’t spoken to in some time.” Values and lifestyles, closely related motivations that develop early in life and rarely change across the life course, were both mentioned about a dozen times. Values (perhaps predictably) was a common motivation for seeking political information. One participant recounted the story of working to get a new political on the ballot ahead of the election in November. Though they understood that the party likely did not have much of a shot in the coming cycle, and there were risks to interacting with elections’ officials and collecting signatures from the public, a firm belief in the mission of the party drove them. This led them to seek (with varied levels of success) information about the political process from members of the local government and the community. Lifestyles were stronger motivations for source selection, with those who lead a less active lifestyle relying less on human or digital sources of information, preferring print or television. Comments by participants mentioned, “this is the convenient way (to find information)” and “it’s just what I do.” Sources of information Displayed in Figure 4 are the findings for sources of information reported by participants. Considerable differences existed in the information sources consulted by participants in successful and unsuccessful situations. While mass media and family and friends were the mostcommon sources for successful situations, other people (e.g., coworkers, community members) and institutional sources (e.g., government websites) were most common in unsuccessful searches. The source that participants complained about the most was that of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “it just feels like important things are missing. Maybe I just can’t find them on there, though.” Figure 4. Sources of Information Several participants made it clear that, “I CAN use the Internet,” but that they still like to use print and interpersonal (family and friend) sources if possible, even during the pandemic: “They are more familiar. I know how to get around them,” as one participant said. Other participants spoke proudly of their tech-savviness and how the pandemic had not significantly affected how they found information. As one participant noted, “I use my tablet. I can just open it up and all my news stories are there.” Emerging from these narratives about Internet use were three types of participants: those who expressed tech-savviness, those who express knowledge but not preference (the first group mentioned above), and those who expressed disinterest or opposition (rare among participants, but not absent). Internet use, in addition to serving its informational role, served a role in preserving social connectedness among some individuals. because they are around and available. However, participants did not feel a strong need or ability to use them as a source of information during the pandemic. It was either not prudent or possible given the spread of the deadly disease. Thus, the “small worlds” of the individual got even smaller as personal networks dominated the lives of many of these individuals. Practical Implications There are a few practical implications to extrapolate from these findings. Mass media and close personal relationships played a major role as sources of information for these individuals during COVID-19, while wider network figures did not. However, wider network figures – community members, work acquaintances, and social services and libraries – are important sources of contradictory information (i.e., information that causes one to question their preconceived beliefs), whereas close family and friends and mass media are often sources of confirmation bias. This situation of the pandemic, then, may make some rural older adults more susceptible to misinformation and sustained misperceptions of reality. This elevates the need for concerned support agencies, like libraries, to provide (safe) outreach to these populations, perhaps arranging for community-wide online events facilitated through Zoom (with the library providing technical support) or socially-distanced activities. It is also noteworthy that community information was difficult to find during this period. Communities are considered a common point of social connection for rural older adults and an absence of this community presence may increase social isolation and depression (Newman & Zainal, 2020; van Orden et al., 2020). Understanding the limitations to access to community during this period, and the sense of disconnection that can come with a poverty of community information, it may be seen as an imperative to find new ways to reach the older adult population in rural communities. It could also be beneficial to focus on the information sources to which older adults do have access (family, mass media) as a way to build community as well, perhaps including highlighting local rural community news and people on the regional television news. Community newspapers and newsletter can provide some information, particularly if they are well written and provide diverse community perspectives. Family and friends who are still working in the community during a situation like the COVID-19 pandemic may be able to provide updates so that those older adults who are struggling with community exposure can retain better connections. Limitations There are several limitations to note for this study, in addition to opportunities for further research. Methodologically, using a qualitative, interview approach is useful for eliciting rich and less-forced data+ (as opposed to questionnaires that provide only discrete option choices). However, the energy exhausted to perform an interview-based study limits the number of participants in the study, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Future studies may utilize a mixed-methods approach (or base a questionnaire off the findings of this study) to expand the representativeness of the findings. Participants for this study were selected using a convenient sampling approach that focused on older adults in the area surrounding the researchers’ university. This sampling approach, while not uncommon in qualitative research, does also limit the representativeness of the findings. This study also focuses on a very specific period of time during the COVID-19 pandemic (late summer 2020). This was in the midst of the first real “peak” of the virus in the United States – and predated any major news about the development of a vaccine – so participants were likely more cautious than they would be in later stages of the virus progression when their understanding of the virus was more-advanced. The context of rural Kansas may also limit the generalizability of some of the findings, as we know that rural older Kansans tend to be very conservative politically (Kansas’s 1st Congressional District, for instance, is one of the most consistently conservative in the nation), which, in the United States, was correlated with greater skepticism towards the virus and the necessity for preventative measures (though many older conservatives did take their own preventative measures even if they thought it was unnecessary for their younger, healthy relatives to do so) (Latkin et al., 2021). Conclusion Though the COVID-19 pandemic led many older adults to physically isolate, the drive to connect socially with other people and to ensure the health and well-being of family and friends did not diminish. As the information environments of these individuals changed, they continued to see close personal connections as a way to seek information as well as feel less isolated in their homes. Unsurprisingly, information about the virus itself was the most sought-after, followed by political information (influenced by the upcoming 2020 election). However, the motivations for seeking this information were more complex. Navigating shifting circumstances in source availability led to behaviors that were markedly distinct from those that may have been expected in the pre-pandemic era. A myriad of affective influences (i.e., the social drive to connect with others) combined with uncertainty about the evolving COVID situation, led this vulnerable population of older adults to turn to collaborative platforms like online social networking sites to seek information during this crisis period of the peak COVID-19 pandemic. References Agarwal, N. K., Xu, Y. and Poo, D. C. (2011), “A context-based investigation into source use by information seekers”, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 62 No. 6, pp. 1087-1104. 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