Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 2, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 14, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Sep 15, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Assessing the community risk perception toward COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea: an infodemiological study utilizing Google and NAVER relative search volume
ABSTRACT
Background:
South Korea is among the best-performing countries to tackle the coronavirus pandemic utilizing massive drive-through tests and facemasks, as well as extensive social distancing. However, understanding the patterns of risk perception could also facilitate effective risk communication to minimize the impact of disease spread during crisis.
Objective:
We aimed to explore the patterns of community health risk perception of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in South Korea using Internet search data.
Methods:
Google and NAVER relative search volume (RSV) data were collected using COVID-19-related terms in Korean language and retrieved according to time, gender, age groups, type of devices, and location. Online queries were compared with the number of new COVID-19 cases and tests on a daily basis recorded in the Kaggle open access data set by Joong Kun Lee and colleagues. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were employed to assess whether correlations between new COVID-19 cases and Internet searches were affected by time.
Results:
The number of COVID-19-related queries in South Korea increased during the local events including the local transmission, approval of coronavirus test kits, implementation of coronavirus drive-through tests, facemask shortage, and widespread campaign for social distancing as well as during international events such as the announcement of Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Online queries were also higher in women (r-0.763−0.823; p<0.05), age groups of ≤29 (r-0.726−0.821; p<0.05), 30–44 (0.701−0.826; p<0.05), and ≥50 (0.706−0.725; p<0.05). In terms of spatial distribution, Google and NAVER RSV were higher in affected areas. Moreover, greater correlations were found in mobile searches (0.704−0.804; p<0.05) compared to that of desktop searches (0.705−0.717; p<0.05), indicating the changing behavior in searching health online information during outbreak. Those varied Internet searches related to COVID-19 represented the community health risk perception. In addition, as country with high number of coronavirus tests, results showed that adults perceived the coronavirus test-related information as more important than disease-related knowledge. Meanwhile, the younger and older age groups have a different perception, making the infection-related information among the essential searches.
Conclusions:
The use of both Google and NAVER RSV to explore the patterns of community health risk perception could be beneficial for targeting risk communication in several perspectives including time, population characteristics, and location.
Citation
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