Abstract：
People\'s information behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic was challenged through vast amounts of information, misinformation, and disinformation. This study sets out to address the research gap of longitudinal, qualitative inquiries about how people\'s information behavior changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to assess how residents of German-speaking Switzerland perceived and evaluated information gathering during a global health crisis. As part of the \"Solidarity in Times of a Pandemic\" (SolPan) Research Commons, 83 semi-structured interviews with residents of German-speaking Switzerland were conducted in April 2020 (T1), October 2020 (T2), and October 2021 (T3). People were asked about their lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative data analysis followed a reflexive thematic analysis approach, using Wilson\'s model of information behavior as a theoretical framework. Participants perceived high-quality journalistic news media, the Swiss national government, scientific experts, and their direct social environment as trustworthy information sources. They were motivated to gather information through the wish of gaining agency and certainty in the context of a major, global health crisis. Intervening variables that hindered information seeking included a perceived lack of agency, habituation effects in the later stages of the pandemic, information overload, inconsistent information, and conspiracy theories. While information needs were generally high in T1, participants expressed a growing extent of information fatigue in T2. In T3, the most prominent themes were conflicting information and differing interpretations, which led to an increased perception of societal polarization, which was perceived as a direct consequence of participants\' information behavior. This finding is contextualized through established models of attitude formation: The study indicates how participants formed rather stable attitudes over time and how this led to a growing polarization and societal segmentation as the pandemic progressed. Practical implications regarding how to meet such societal polarization during crises are discussed.
摘要：
人们在COVID-19大流行期间的信息行为受到了大量信息的挑战，错误信息,和虚假信息。本研究着手解决纵向的研究差距，定性询问人们的信息行为在COVID-19大流行期间是如何变化的。它旨在评估说德语的瑞士居民在全球健康危机期间如何看待和评估信息收集。作为“大流行时期的团结”(SolPan)研究公地的一部分，2020年4月（T1）对讲德语的瑞士居民进行了83次半结构化访谈，2020年10月（T2），2021年10月（T3）。人们被问及他们在COVID-19大流行期间的生活经历。定性数据分析遵循反身性主题分析方法，以威尔逊的信息行为模型为理论框架。参与者认为高质量的新闻新闻媒体，瑞士国家政府,科学专家,以及他们作为可靠信息来源的直接社会环境。他们有动机通过在专业背景下获得代理和确定性来收集信息，全球健康危机。阻碍信息寻求的干预变量包括感知到缺乏代理，大流行后期的习惯效应，信息过载，信息不一致,阴谋论。虽然T1的信息需求普遍较高，但参与者在T2的信息疲劳程度越来越高。在T3中，最突出的主题是相互矛盾的信息和不同的解释，这导致了人们对社会两极分化的认识，这被认为是参与者信息行为的直接结果。这一发现是通过既定的态度形成模型进行的：该研究表明，随着时间的流逝，参与者如何形成相当稳定的态度，以及随着大流行的发展，这如何导致两极分化和社会分割。讨论了在危机期间如何应对这种社会两极分化的实际意义。
