People’s Information Security during a Pandemic and in the Post-Pandemic Period as a Systemic Phenomenon in Terms of Their Protectedness

Abstract

This paper shares the findings from a study that assessed the level of a person’s information security during a pandemic and in the post-pandemic period. The base for the study was advertising and textual and visual content with theoretical-academic, practical-medical, cultural educational, social, and social-political narratives containing information about COVID-19, an acute respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The authors analyzed materials from leading media outlets in Ukraine, Russia, the UK, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy and from the official website of the World Health Organization (WHO). For a better insight into the ongoing processes, the following key groups of threats to one’s information security were identified: another person, groups of people, collectives, masses, and social institutions; programming and technical means and information-telecommunications systems; structured channels for dissemination of mass information. The more tangible impacts on one’s information security within the specialized information space segment were investigated in the third group of threats, namely at the level of analysis of structured channels for dissemination of mass information. Based on their analysis of the latest information flows, the authors developed a special socio communication model for ensuring a person’s security in times of epidemics and crises that covers principles of informing the public, such as filling the information space with various conceptual markers; ensuring proper professional-information interpretation of various phenomena and processes; undertaking the innovative enhancement of the sphere of information production and diffusion; ensuring a universal individual nature. The authors suggest that the study of content in local, regional, statewide, and international media resources potentially can serve as a crucial knowledge base for comprehending all significant characteristics of informing the public in times of societal disruption. The authors’ exploration of information flowing across multiple media channels helped them gain a better understanding of the need for and utility of verifying and fact-checking information to ensure the meeting of information needs and proper performance of relevant roles in society, with the following key characteristics of good information identified: value, relevance, objectivity, reliability, completeness, comprehensibility, and adequacy.