TY - GEN
T1 - Managing uncertainty
T2 - 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2017
AU - Gui, Xinning
AU - Kou, Yubo
AU - Pine, Kathleen
AU - Chen, Yunan
N1 - Funding Information:
Many thanks to Kai Zheng, Tera Leigh Reynolds, and Clara Caldeira for their cogent comments, and to our anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant HCC-1219197 and 2015–2016 UC Irvine Academic Senate Council on Research, Computing and Libraries (CORCL) award.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 ACM.
PY - 2017/5/2
Y1 - 2017/5/2
N2 - Recently, diseases like H1N1 influenza, Ebola, and Zika virus have created severe crises, requiring public resources and personal behavior adaptation. Crisis Informatics literature examines interconnections of people, organizations, and IT during crisis events. However, how people use technology to cope with disease crises (outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics) remains understudied. We investigate how individuals used social media in response to the outbreak of Zika, focusing on travel-related decisions. We found that extreme uncertainty and ambiguity characterized the Zika virus crisis. To cope, people turned to social media for information gathering and social learning geared towards personal risk assessment and modifying decisions when dealing with partial and conflicting information about Zika. In particular, individuals sought local information and used socially informed logical reasoning to deduce the risk at a specific locale. We conclude with implications for designing information systems to support individual risk assessment and decision-making when faced with uncertainty and ambiguity during public health crises.
AB - Recently, diseases like H1N1 influenza, Ebola, and Zika virus have created severe crises, requiring public resources and personal behavior adaptation. Crisis Informatics literature examines interconnections of people, organizations, and IT during crisis events. However, how people use technology to cope with disease crises (outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics) remains understudied. We investigate how individuals used social media in response to the outbreak of Zika, focusing on travel-related decisions. We found that extreme uncertainty and ambiguity characterized the Zika virus crisis. To cope, people turned to social media for information gathering and social learning geared towards personal risk assessment and modifying decisions when dealing with partial and conflicting information about Zika. In particular, individuals sought local information and used socially informed logical reasoning to deduce the risk at a specific locale. We conclude with implications for designing information systems to support individual risk assessment and decision-making when faced with uncertainty and ambiguity during public health crises.
KW - Crisis informatics
KW - Decision-making
KW - Information seeking
KW - Online forums
KW - Public health
KW - Risk assessment
KW - Social media
KW - Uncertainty reduction
KW - Zika virus
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044865155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85044865155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3025453.3025891
DO - 10.1145/3025453.3025891
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85044865155
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 4520
EP - 4533
BT - CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 6 May 2017 through 11 May 2017
ER -