Charting the Australian COVID‐19 Information Flow: Implications for Information Policy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe outbreak of COVID‐19 posed one of the most serious threats to humanity in recent times. The rapid transmission of this virus across the globe and presence of various information imperfections (e.g., absence of information, confusing information, misinformation) made the craft of developing an effective information policy during this pandemic extremely difficult. This study has analyzed the COVID‐19 information environment of Australia with an aim to understand the important features of the information flow which, in part, helped Australia to achieve one of the lowest COVID‐19 test positivity rates. The findings of this study carry important implications for the design of future information policy imperatives aiming to deal with pandemics, natural catastrophes, and human‐made disasters.