News media coverage, regardless of the platform being used, can shape people’s opinions, perceptions, behaviors, and preferences about policy, security, and civil liberties in times of crisis. This study examines the possible cultivation impact of news post exposure on Facebook on shaping threat perception. Furthermore, it aims at exploring the correlation between Facebook news exposure, preferring high security levels, and curbing some civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we used the survey method ( N = 1309 ) with youths aged 18-35 in the U.S., Spain, and Egypt. Our results showed that heavy news exposure on Facebook cultivated fear and terror perceptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it shaped people’s preference for a tightened security environment and willingness to trade off some civil liberties. In other words, despite the different media and political systems, heavy news post consumption on Facebook can increase the tendency to give up civil liberty rights and prefer a more stringent security environment.

Many research studies defined news pages that connect users with public affairs as social media influencers. This includes opinion leaders, journalists, media personnel, editors, and political experts. In this sense, news consumption on influencers’ Facebook pages can have the same cultivation impact as consuming news on any offline platform, particularly during times of threat. Within this, we aim to reexamine the cultivation theory in the context of social media. Thus, we explore the role of influencers on Facebook in cultivating threat perception among youths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, to examine the possible correlation between threat perception and favoring of more restrictive policies on Facebook news coverage. For this, we used the survey method (n=1,309) on youths aged 18-35 years in Egypt, Spain, and the USA. In this respect, our data revealed a significant relationship between news consumption on influencers’ Facebook pages and threat level. The more people consume news on influencers’ Facebook pages, the higher their threat perception is. Our findings also demonstrate that even though the cultivation assumption is valid in the context of Facebook, there are variations from the TV context postulation. Nowadays, people are aware of the effect of their news exposure on shaping their perception yet being aware did not mediate the cultivation effect.