In her dissertation titled “Alternative, Mainstream, and Everything in Between: Information-Seeking Repertoires in Prolonged Crises”, Sofia Johansson analyzes how the four waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, from April 2020, until April 2021, affected how the Swedish population sought information from traditional news media, alternative news media, and from personal networks to understand what was happening during the period.
New concept of information-seeking in the high-choice media landscape
The study introduces the concept of “information-seeking repertoire”, which refers to the active process of searching for information in different sources, combining traditional media, alternative channels and information from personal contacts. Sources used, or the “information-seeking repertoires”, can include government websites and news organizations, social media platforms, alternative outlets, and conversations with friends or family, each serving different purposes in how individuals make sense of a crisis.
– To truly understand how audiences respond to crises, we need audience-oriented research that investigates how individuals take part of crisis-related information in the current high-choice media landscape, likely combining both official and alternative news sources. My dissertation aims to fill that gap by looking at how individuals combine information sources to seek information, Sofia Johansson explains.
Analyzing information-seeking across crises phases
Unlike previous research that looked at information-seeking at a single moment, Sofia Johansson’s study followed patterns throughout several phases of the pandemic. Using longitudinal data and advanced statistical modeling, she analyzed how people’s repertoires changed as the level of perceived threat rose and fell.
She also explores how emotions such as anger and anxiety influenced their information-seeking behavior. Her findings show that both trust and emotions were influential factors. In high-threat phases of the pandemic, anxious and angry individuals seem to expand their repertoires by including additional sources. At the same time, trust stabilized information-seeking. Those with high levels of institutional trust mainly turned to official and mainstream sources throughout the crisis, while those with low levels of trust kept a rather broad repertoire spanning mainstream and alternative sources. In other words, how individuals change (or expand) their repertoires when threat severity increases may depend on their prior trust levels, where those with moderate levels of trust are most likely to include new sources.
Award-winning research
One of the dissertation’s papers, “From low threat to high threat: a latent transition analysis of information-seeking repertoires during prolonged crises,” received the Best PhD Paper Award from the Crisis Communication Think Tank, recognizing its innovative approach to understanding information behavior in uncertain contexts.
Insights for future communication
Johansson’s conclusions go beyond the pandemic as she delves into crisis communication strategies that could be used to better inform audiences. She points out that information-seeking repertoires have a dual nature and can be both relatively stable and, at the same time, responsive to contextual changes during oscillating prolonged crises.
The traditional way of disseminating information across multiple official channels may not be enough to reach individuals with broad repertoires and/or low institutional trust. Communicators may need to directly address or respond to alternative and opposing perspectives that these individuals are exposed to, for example. However, the thesis also cautions against viewing broad information-seeking as inherently bad, as it may contribute to more informed decision-making. To develop externally valid best-practice advice, scholars therefore need to investigate why, when, and for whom broad information-seeking is problematic.
The dissertation was supervised by Nicklas Håkansson and Orla Vigsø, and defended at JMG, University of Gothenburg, in November 2025.
Read the dissertation here.
Text: Luiza Lafuente dos Santos
