2.2. Gratifications Obtained from Communication Media
With the rapid development of the internet, social media have become prevalent in Taiwan. Facebook, LINE, and Instagram are the most popular social media in Taiwan, among which LINE has the highest penetration rate, with 91.3% of Taiwan’s people using this medium, followed by Facebook and Instagram, with penetration rates of 85.7% and 42.38%, respectively, among those who are aged twelve and above [
11]. A recent trend for people in Taiwan is to use social media to obtain news. Studies [
12,
13] indicate that approximately 83% of Taiwan’s people relied on the internet for news, among which 71% used social media as their major channels for news. Furthermore, LINE (49%) and Facebook (47%) were the most popular social media used by people to obtain news. The existing studies identified four gratifications that people obtained from social media to obtain news: socialization, relationship maintenance, surveillance, and entertainment. During the outbreak of COVID-19, this study surmised that most people used social media to obtain pandemic-related information for surveillance.
Professional news media in this study include cable news channels, print newspapers, and electronic newspapers. Lee’s [
14] study identified four gratifications obtained from news consumption: opinion gratification, sociability, information, and entertainment. Li [
15] examined the existing studies on news consumption and further divided the gratification of information into information for daily use and information for professional use. Moreover, several studies indicated that surveillance was the gratification obtained across different types of news consumption [
14,
16]. This study conjectured that when people used news media to seek pandemic information during the outbreak, their main motivations were looking for information for daily use and surveillance.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking relevant information is an important way for people to protect themselves. Therefore, timely information, such as the spread of this disease, the location of the confirmed cases, and recommendations from medical experts, is critical information for people who are trying to protect themselves when conducting daily activities. During the outbreak of COVID-19, most people in Taiwan exercised social distancing, reduced face-to-face interactions, and attended no mass gatherings. Interpersonal communication, which includes face-to-face communication and voice communication, was severely restricted during this time [
17]. Therefore, social media and professional news media should be superior to interpersonal communication for providing such information for daily use. Furthermore, past studies [
18,
19] have shown that individuals in Taiwan obtain science and health news mainly from news media because of news media’s expertise with the two types of news. Thus, the authors estimated that news media should be the best channel for individuals to obtain information for daily use, followed by social media, and interpersonal communication would be the poorest channel for obtaining such information.
Hypothesis 1a (H1a). Regarding information for daily use, news media have the highest degrees, followed by social media, and interpersonal communication has the lowest degrees in niche breadth and competitive superiority.
Another type of critical information for people to obtain is understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on both Taiwan and other countries. This type of information enables individuals to perform surveillance of their environments, which is the expertise of news media. The literature has shown that the most important gratification news media offer to the public is surveillance [
14,
16]. Moreover, existing studies have discovered that more than 50% of Taiwanese people read news from social media rather than from news media. Many individuals like to read news and share it on social media [
13,
20]. Therefore, social media platforms have performed some of the news media’s functions. With these findings, we hypothesized that news media would be the superior media in performing the function of surveillance, social media would be the next, and interpersonal communication would be the poorest.
Hypothesis 1b (H1b). Regarding surveillance, news media have the highest degrees, followed by social media, and interpersonal communication has the lowest degrees in niche breadth and competitive superiority.
COVID-19 is such an unpredictable disease that when it emerged in Taiwan, people were situated in a highly uncertain context, which prompted people to seek and discuss COVID-19-related information on the internet in great volume. Chin et al. [
21] investigated the contents of social media and Google search volume in Taiwan during this time and found that the information from news reports transmitted to the public was instantly transformed into relevant discussions in social media and was also positively correlated with Google search volumes. Various types of information from different sources are available to the public, containing a great deal of misinformation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation is rife, which causes distress for most people because misinformation contains rumors, incorrect protective measures, and false disease information [
3,
21]. If people cannot differentiate true from false information, it may result in detrimental effects on their health. Therefore, when individuals select a given medium to obtain information, they are likely to be concerned with the quality of information conveyed by this medium.
News media have expertise in news gathering; thus, the news reports should have the highest quality of information. However, a controversial issue in Taiwan is whether Taiwan should be independent from China or united with China. Most news media take either of the two positions on this issue, which often affects their news reports. Most news media are concerned about their political ideology; thus, if a news event is about China, the news reports by news media with different political ideologies will differ greatly from one another. Therefore, most people in Taiwan consider political news reports by news media to often be distorted and biased [
15]. This study predicted that most people in Taiwan would not regard news media as reliable and accurate sources of COVID-19 information. Moreover, news reports from social media come from various sources and are often mixed with misinformation [
3,
21]. Hence, there is great variation in terms of information quality from social media. This study deemed the information from interpersonal communication to have the highest quality because during the outbreak of COVID-19, the government in Taiwan imposed a restrictive rule on face-to-face communication. Thus, most people only contacted important others, such as family members, friends, and a few trusted colleagues. These people were concerned with each other’s health, and thus, when they conveyed information to their important others, they ensured that the information was accurate [
3]. With this reasoning, the following hypothesis was developed:
Hypothesis 1c (H1c). For information quality, interpersonal communication has the highest degrees, followed by social media, with news media having the lowest degrees in niche breadth and competitive superiority.
According to niche theory, gratification opportunities are important resources for media to possess, which enable individuals to eliminate time and space constraints. Therefore, convenience of use is an important gratification opportunity for communication media. News media include electronic newspapers and cable news channels, which offer updated news almost every hour. In addition, when reporting a complicated issue such as COVID-19, news media often organize all information in a logical sequence for the audience to better understand this issue. Hence, this study hypothesized news media to be the best channel for the gratification of convenience. Currently, many individuals in Taiwan use social media for news. Nevertheless, several studies have indicated that the types of news shared or read in social media differ greatly from those in news media, with social media tending to center on just a few types of news [
1,
2]. Thus, social media would be less ideal than professional news media but better than interpersonal communication regarding comprehensive news reports. With this reasoning, the following hypothesis was developed:
Hypothesis 1d (H1d). Regarding convenience, news media have the highest degrees, followed by social media, with interpersonal communication having the lowest degrees in niche breadth and competitive superiority.