The SARS-COV-2 virus or novel coronavirus was first detected in December of 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Even though doctors suspected that it was a highly dangerous virus similar to SARS, the Chinese government denied the existence of human-to-human transmission until January 20th. On January 23^rd, Wuhan was suddenly put under a complete lockdown. The rest of Hubei Province was also put under lockdown soon afterward.

How did residents in Hubei Province acquire and share information during its COVID-19 outbreak? As China was the first country to experience the disease, understanding of the virus and the outbreak was extremely limited during the initial stage of the outbreak. Methods of prevention and treatment were almost completely unknown. The information control measures carried out in China made it even more difficult for the public to understand the situation.

We conducted interviews with residents of Hubei Province while they were under lockdown between late January and the end of February 2020. Our study reached several interesting findings.

1. While we expected that people would actively search for COVID-19 related information, our study suggested that individuals primarily acquire information passively, relying on TV news, news subscription services, and verified social media accounts of governments, and state media.
2. People trust governmental sources, despite the initial problems of cover-up.
3. People prefer to share information with family members through private channels than with one’s extended social networks and the general public through public channels mostly due to concerns with censorship.

This study has been recently published in the COVID-19 special issue of Health Communication.

Tang, L. & Zou, W. (2020). Health information consumption under COVID-19 lockdown: An interview study of residents of Hubei Province, China. Health Communication, 36(1): 74-80. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1847447.