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The lockdown that was deployed in Wuhan, China to combat the COVID-19 pandemic curbed the infection but also created great information challenges for people in social isolation. This resulted in surge in online health information seeking (OHIS) behaviors of the patients and their families. While the Internet has been widely used by Chinese public to access and search health information, there is relatively little research in the context of pandemic outbreaks, especially at the onset of a strong lockdown while many people were panicking. From a total of 10 908 '#COVID-19 Patient Seeking Help' posts on Weibo in a period of 20 days when the lockdown policy was first initiated, we identified 1496 unique patients living in or with family in Wuhan, China. Using textual analysis, we explored OHIS behaviors at the onset of the pandemic. Many faced increased difficulties accessing offline healthcare services and such turned to social media for help and information. In particular, the findings highlight the following themes: ' OHIS for medical treatment ', ' OHIS to manage self-quarantine ', ' OHIS for tangible support ' and ' OHIS to navigate information discrepancy '. Overall, our findings provide important insights into health information seeking behaviors and the role of social media during a pandemic. Our findings also highlight the importance of considering people's information need and challenges created due to the lockdown policies in the future pandemic communication and preparedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends the Comprehensive Model of Information Seeking (CMIS) to online health information seeking in the context of India. This study considers the Internet (i.e., media) use an antecedent factor and the personal relevance factor salience is separated into two dimensions - susceptibility and severity. Structural equation modeling analysis (N = 990) tested the associations between health-related antecedents, information-carrier factors, and their direct effects on online information seeking. The results among online health information seekers in India showed significant relationships between length and frequency of media use and self-efficacy to engage in preventive behavior to the information carrier utility. As predicted, demographics have no significant relationship with utility of the Internet, and direct experience with illness resulted in negative relationship with the Internet utility. Contrary to expectations, susceptibility and severity produced negative relationships with the Internet utility. Result shows that both information-carrier factors - characteristics related to trust and utility related to perceived usefulness and relevance of information - directly affect online health-information-seeking behavior. Unlike the original CMIS that primarily focused on specific illnesses, the current modified CMIS can be adapted and tailored to general online health-information-seeking behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]