Coronavirus news? No thanks. Hongkongers more put off by pandemic updates than people in Beijing, Singapore and Taipei, study shows
- Officials must consider ‘information overload’ when communicating during crises, experts say
- Many Hongkongers experienced ‘pandemic fatigue’ and did not want daily details of infections, deaths
Hongkongers were not alone in struggling with “pandemic fatigue”, but their tendency to mute their smartphone group chats, quit social media and avoid news about Covid-19 was stronger than among people in Singapore, Beijing and Taipei, a study has found.
Communications scholars at Chinese University who conducted the research linked the Hong Kong residents’ avoidance of news to information overload, mistrust in government and ambiguous policy delivery.
“Officials did not make clear whether Hong Kong was moving towards ‘lying flat’ or full reopening,” said Professor Wei Ran, who led the research, using a popular term meaning to do the bare minimum to get by.
“They denied they were doing nothing, but relaxed restrictions at the same time, and that might have seemed puzzling to residents.”
The study by the university’s school of journalism and communication, unpublished but seen by the Post, offered a glimpse of where Hong Kong stood in coping with the global crisis of Covid-19 information overload, and compared the behaviour of people in other places which had adopted different policies.
