News Avoidance during the Covid-19 Crisis: Understanding Information Overload

Abstract

This study investigates the degree of news avoidance during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. Based on two panel surveys conducted in the period April-June 2020, this study shows that the increased presence of this behavior, can be explained by negative emotions and feelings the news causes by citizens. Moreover, news avoidance indeed has a positive effect on perceived well-being. These findings point to an acting balance for individual news consumers. In a pandemic such as Covid-19 news consumers need to be informed, but avoiding news is sometimes necessary to stay mentally healthy.

Tuning Out the News. A Cross-Media Perspective on News Avoidance Practices of Young News Users in Flanders During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Both previous research as well as our participants highlighted how news often presents news by evoking negative emotions (Aslam et al 2020;Nguyen et al 2021). While studies that predate the pandemic foresaw an important role for news media in times of crisis, for some users, the news environment during the coronavirus pandemic appears to have brought with it emotional and mental strain (de Bruin et al 2021;Nguyen et al 2021). In line with Skovsgaard and Andersen (2020), solutions to intentional news avoidance practices are found in the selection and presentation of news.…”

“…Again, these users have sought refuge in news avoidance practices in order to shield themselves from further mental strain (Nguyen et al 2021). While previous studies have already shown a relation between certain news and negative emotions or mental well-being (Boukes and Vliegenthart 2017;de Bruin et al 2021; Ytre-Arne and Moe 2021), this is especially problematic during a global health crisis where news users are already in a more vulnerable position. While we agree that habitual news avoidance might thus highlight important sociodemographic and structural fault lines in news consumption practices, exploring situational bouts of news avoidance might provide important insights into how users experienced news and enacted news avoidance practices during the pandemic.…”

Gatekeepers as Safekeepers—Mapping Audiences’ Attitudes towards News Media’s Editorial Oversight Functions during the COVID-19 Crisis

“…Exposure to the most important news is of particular importance in the context of information overload (Zarcadoolas et al 2009), which is one of the characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic. Empirical research has found that as many as 60% of the population felt overloaded with information at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis (de Bruin et al 2021).…”

Supplemental Material for The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds.

“…As awareness around doomscrolling grows, users might become wary of news outlets and social media accounts that post disproportionately negative content. Individuals who experience negative outcomes from doomscrolling may then develop news avoidance techniques to protect their wellbeing, a finding echoed by recent surveys on COVID-19 information overload, well-being, and avoidance (de Bruin et al, 2021;Jain, 2021).…”