Assessing Information Poverty on COVID 19 among Housewives in Kerala

Abstract

People around the world have been facing the hard times of the COVID 19 pandemic. As it is important to get updated about COVID 19, the researchers intended to analyse the information needs of housewives in Kerala in India and the sources adopted by them for the same. The COVID 19 information needs of housewives considered for the paper are COVID 19 symptoms, virus transmission, preventive measures, test methods, vaccinations, quarantine rules, travelling advice, daily positive cases, death rates, test positivity rates and variants. In addition, the study evaluates information poverty of the population under consideration on COVID 19, so that it assessed the factors affecting the information poverty of them. 196 housewives responded to the structured questionnaire. The major finding of this study is housewives in Kerala experience some sort of information poverty on COVID 19, primarily it is due to lack of ICT infrastructure and skills for using it. As women are the prominent caregivers of the family, it is more necessary to eradicate information poverty on COVID 19 by providing more ICT infrastructure and imparting more skills development programmes.