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COVID-19 can be deemed the most notable health emergency in the 21st century, as it constituted a startling event that compelled billions of people worldwide into lockdown and isolation.As of August 31, 2023, the most recent statistics for Korea reveal 34.57 million cumulative confirmed cases and 35,934 deaths, instigating a nationwide sense of crisis.Despite the downgrade of Korea's current COVID-19 rating from level 2 to level 4, akin to the flu, public anxiety persists.According to the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model, individuals actively seek risk-related information in crisis situations in response to the psychological necessity for adequate information.However, finding previous studies that analyze the practical influence of media coverage on information-seeking behavior related to COVID-19 syndrome in Korea has proven challenging.The main goal of this research is to analyze the influence of COVID-19 media coverage on the online information-seeking behavior of the audience using the RISP model through regression analysis and Granger causality tests.The volume of searches for COVID-19 information was extracted using Naver's search trend analysis tool, which continues to rank first in Korea's search market, surpassing Google, and is widely employed in academic research.The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths was extracted from the COVID-19 outbreak trend statistics provided by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).Regression analysis revealed that newspaper coverage of COVID-19, rather than numerical data related to COVID-19 patients (such as the number of verified cases or fatalities), significantly influenced COVID-19 online information-seeking behavior.Granger causality tests confirmed an interactive relationship between newspaper reports on COVID-19 and the public's online information-seeking behavior, mutually influencing each other.This suggests that newspaper coverage and online information-seeking behavior have interacted to amplify the nationwide response to the COVID-19 crisis in Korea.In conclusion, unlike previous studies, this research, utilizing regression analysis and Granger causality tests, demonstrated that media coverage of COVID-19 was a pivotal factor influencing online information-seeking behavior at a societal level during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea.
Byong Cheol Kim (Wed,) studied this question.