O impacto das informações sobre pandemia disponibilizadas pelas mídias no processo de ansiedade informacional dos idosos do município de São José do Mipibu/RN

Abstract

Given the current situation of the Covid-19 crisis, the excess of information has generated a worrying scenario about the mental health of elderly people who are faced with an infodemic and who, for the most part, do not have access to diversity of information, given the lack of approximation with technologies. Thus, the objective of this work is to analyze the impact caused by the dissemination of information through digital media in the context of the pandemic and its relationship with the increase in the level of informational anxiety in the elderly living in the municipality of São José de Mipibu in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. Therefore, specific objectives are defined as understanding how the access, use and dissemination of information about the pandemic is taking place among the elderly in the municipality; identify the information anxiety-related behavior of these elderly people; and verifying which technological resources are most used in the process of searching for information by the public, the object of study of this work. Methodologically, this research is a bibliographical study, where the exploratory and described research method is used and uses the application of questionnaires for data extraction. The results show that a considerable portion of elderly people living in the city do not have access to the internet, with television being the main technological resource for obtaining information about the pandemic. It highlights that the elderly who are less exposed to high consumption of news and dependence on the web were shown to suffer less from anxiety during the pandemic. It concludes that the excess of information, as well as the misinformation produced and disseminated by the media during the pandemic, with content related to the coronavirus, as well as its causes and consequences, has generated a worrying scenario about the mental health of elderly people who are recipients of this information, which directly impact their way of life.