ABSTRACT
The coronavirus (COVID-19) became a pandemic infection by March 2020, attracting predominant media attention after reported millions of infection and death. Studies have identified news values, topicality, and urgency of news items as major factors determining the information-seeking behavior of media audiences. However, during an outbreak of a pandemic disease, understanding the symptoms, causes, prevention, and treatment options could underline media coverage, and information needs and seeking behavior of, the audiences. In Nigeria, we investigated the relationship between online information-seeking behavior of audiences overnight and news on the coronavirus the following day (containment and mitigation messages), relying on the health belief model and agenda-setting theories to conduct computational analysis and big data analytics of news stories between February 2020 and April 2020. The probed causal relationship was established in few days within the period, showing that the quantum of leadings from potential audiences’ overnight digital information seeking about the virus did not influence media reportage the following days. This leaves gaps in appropriating the digital space for media reportage, crisis reporting, media responsibility, and performance during a disease outbreak and capacity of the nation to provide information, manage perception, and response to sudden disease outbreak.
