Seeking Trustworthy Information on COVID-19: A Qualitative Study with the African American Community

BSTRACT COVID-19 has been known to have a disproportionate impact on African Americans in the United States. Although studies have been conducted on the reasons for this disparity, there has been less focus on how the African American population sought trustworthy health information using technology. This is important because African Americans’ mistrust of the medical system has been suggested as a possible reason for the disproportionate impact. Therefore, we conducted interviews with 18 African Americans with chronic conditions to discover what types of challenges they faced while searching for trustworthy information on COVID-19 and the strategies they used to overcome these challenges. We found that participants actively evaluated the credibility of different information sources, searched for first-hand information from people they could relate to, and tried to avoid or reduce media consumption to prevent information overload.