Agility of science and technology in communication has brought a new dimension of information dissemination, which may have influenced human perceptions, especially on the dissemination of news pertaining to this pandemic. This research aims to determine the students’ sources of information regarding the COVID-19 disease and investigate their intention to share the information pertaining to COVID-19. A survey study was designed using an online questionnaire involving 147 higher education students. The online questionnaire; measures three elements of the students’ intention, namely initiative, desire and resourcefulness. The findings; the sources of information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic are mainly the government authorities and local healthcare workers. The most preferred medium of information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is social media, and the most trusted medium is the television broadcast. Also, finding suggests that the students take initiative to verify information and demonstrate a desire to share credible and right information with their family and friends through social media. As such, in an effort or attempt to disseminate credible information about any important matters to the general public, the government can count on students as agents for transmitting the information to third parties including their family and friends.

Unemployment is one of the problems faced by many countries. The International Labour Organization reported that there was about 6.67% unemployment rate in the United States, 5.24% in Germany, 7.3% in the United Kingdom, and 5.72% in Australia. Meanwhile in Malaysia, the unemployment rate was about 3.22%. This report was based on the unemployment rate in 2014 (International Labour Organization, 2014). According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the unemployment rate in Malaysia has increased by 17.1 percent, which is 610.5 thousand as compared to 521.3 thousand in the same month in 2019. The unemployment rate in March 2020 increased to 3.9 percent (The Office of Chief Statistician Malaysia, 2020). The report shows that labour force as people aged between 15 to 64 years, and

This study aims to investigate the influence of students’ knowledge, attitude, and behavioral intention on their behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey study was designed using an online questionnaire involving 653 respondents from the first to final-year students at a Malaysian university. A CACQ-COV instrument was designed based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) model, comprising 67 items in four constructs: students’ knowledge of the current pandemic, emotional engagement, behavioral intention, and behavioral action. The results show that the students learn most about the COVID-19 pandemic from the media and the internet platform; more than 50% of the students rated the television broadcast as the most trusted media. The mean scores of the students’ knowledge about COVID-19 facts and symptoms; emotion, intention, and action are at high levels. In addition, knowledge, emotion, and behavioral intention have significantly influenced the students’ behaviors and actions; it is noted that emotion has the greatest influence compared with knowledge and behavioral intention. The implication is that television broadcast should be the primary choice of media for carrying out future mass campaigns, in preference to social media, especially for announcing urgent matters and disseminating information related to the current issues.

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