In recent years, videoconferencing has become the primary mode of communication among employees. While it facilitates social interaction and enhances connectivity, studies have highlighted its negative implications such as videoconference fatigue and technostress. Most existing research has employed quantitative methods, revealing a positive relationship between videoconferencing use and stress. This study advances the discourse by offering qualitative insights into the stressors, resultant strains, and coping mechanisms adapted by employees at different hierarchical levels. Through 30 interviews and 7 diary studies in Singapore, the study found new insights on the strains experienced and coping measures adopted among different employees, highlighting a need for videoconferencing etiquette and norms, and showing paradoxical ways of coping by using more technology to counter technostress and more social interaction to counter strains. This study extends the literature on stress and strain from a qualitative perspective, and revisits the existing technostress framework in the current context.

This study is based on a content analysis of 238 forwarded messages sent to a public fact-checking group on WhatsApp in Singapore during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic to understand what types of information people would submit for fact-checking, allowing insights into possible motivations behind the use of fact-checking services. Focusing on content characteristics, we examined the range of topics, valence, and facticity of the messages forwarded to the WhatsApp group to be fact-checked. The most common topic was public policy and action; most of the messages focused on negative aspects; and nearly half of the messages were either partly or entirely inaccurate. Comparing the distribution of messages across a six-month period, we found that content characteristics varied over time. As the situation worsened in Singapore, with number of cases increasing and more regulations implemented by the government, the messages shared to be authenticated focused more on public policy, became more negative, and contained more inaccuracies. These findings indicate that the types of information people seek to authenticate are those that have utility; are important and consequential; are likely to inform their actions and decisions; and can aid them in sense-making.

Although physical isolation measures can stem the spread of COVID-19, they can also heighten individuals’ perceived isolation and feeling of loneliness, resulting in problematic internet use (PIU). However, studies have rarely investigated both the effects of physical and perceived isolation on PIU. Given the widespread availability and accessibility of digital communication technologies, it is difficult to conclude that the former may necessitate the latter inducing PIU. Using a two-wave longitudinal national survey in Singapore (n = 689), this study found that, at Time 1, both physical and perceived social isolation have direct and independent effects on internet users’ preference for online social interaction (POSI), driving PIU. This, in turn, leads to their experience of negative outcomes at Time 2. The results highlight the importance of considering the independent effects of physical and perceived isolation in affecting POSI leading to PIU.