The Use of Sight, Hearing, and Touch on Information-seeking Behaviour of the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

In everyday lives, people often speak about what they see, hear, and touch. Recently, researchers began to investigate the role of the body and senses in information seeking behaviour (ISB). Information that is experienced through the situated and sensory body is called corporeal information. However, existing studies on corporeal information tend to focus on a single sense without considering other senses. This paper investigates the use of sight, hearing, and touch in ISB during the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, to gain further insights into corporeal information. More specifically, content analysis was carried out on 259 people’s testimonies. Our analysis suggests that the use of senses was varied across the modes of information needs, information sources, and information channels. Additionally, our results suggest that the use of sight, hearing, and touch in ISB of the Great East Japan Earthquake significantly varied across demographic factors such as gender, location, and age groups.