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Abstract Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida in 2022, presented a unique challenge for residents due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how the evolving COVID-19 pandemic affected perceptions of hurricane risks and evacuation decisions, particularly the role of COVID-19 concerns in influencing the decision to stay home. The study found that only 4% of respondents cited COVID-19 as the primary reason for staying home, while 50.1% of participants indicated that having a pet played a significant role in their decision. Most survey participants (70.3%) strongly agreed they were provided with timely information to make a good evacuation decision. The most heavily relied upon sources of information included local media, county/city emergency preparedness websites, and electronic media whereas the least relied upon sources of information were social media and print media. The findings of this study suggest that, even in the context of a pandemic, many residents evacuated for Hurricane Ian. However, COVID-19 concerns did play a role in some individuals' decisions, particularly those who were concerned about the crowded conditions in shelters. This study highlights the importance of providing clear, consistent, and timely information to residents during evacuations, particularly during a public health crisis. 

The prevalence and spread of online misinformation during the 2020 US presidential election served to perpetuate a false belief in widespread election fraud. Though much research has focused on how social media platforms connected people to election-related rumors and conspiracy theories, less is known about the search engine pathways that linked users to news content with the potential to undermine trust in elections. In this paper, we present novel data related to the content of political headlines during the 2020 US election period. We scraped over 800,000 headlines from Google's search engine results pages (SERP) in response to 20 election-related keywords—10 general (e.g., "Ballots") and 10 conspiratorial (e.g., "Voter fraud")—when searched from 20 cities across 16 states. We present results from qualitative coding of 5,600 headlines focused on the prevalence of delegitimizing information. Our results reveal that videos (as compared to stories, search results, and advertisements) are the most problematic in terms of exposing users to delegitimizing headlines. We also illustrate how headline content varies when searching from a swing state, adopting a conspiratorial search keyword, or reading from media domains with higher political bias. We conclude with policy recommendations on data transparency that allow researchers to continue to monitor search engines during elections.