TY - JOUR
T1 - From Lower Disease Risk Perception to Higher News Avoidance
T2 - Analysis of News Consumption and Attitude Toward COVID-19 News in Latvia
AU - Murinska, Sandra
AU - Rožukalne, Anda
AU - Strode, Ieva
N1 - Funding Information:
Author contributions: All authors were involved in concept, design, collection of data, interpretation, writing, and critically revising the article. All authors approve final version of the article. Funding: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Latvia, as part of the project ‘Life with COVID-19: Evaluation of Overcoming the Coronavirus Crisis in Latvia and Recommendations for Societal Resilience in the Future’ under Grant number VPP-COVID-2020/1-0013. Declaration of interest: Authors declare no competing interest. Data availability: Data generated or analyzed during this study are available from the authors on request.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by authors; licensee OJCMT by Bastas, CY.
PY - 2022/4/16
Y1 - 2022/4/16
N2 - Recognizing that regular information during a pandemic helps societies navigate through a period of insecurity, the aim of this study is to understand how news about different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic affects the attitude of media audiences towards news. This study seeks to explain the society’s news consumption and the attitude towards COVID-19 news in Latvia linking it to self-evaluation of the perceived disease risk. A national survey data (September 2020, N=1,005) analysis shows a statistically significant but weak correlation between disease risk self-evaluation and the attitude towards pandemic news. Respondents who rate the risk of the disease as higher and real are more interested in news, consume news to create a sense of security, feel less fatigue towards news, and are less likely to avoid COVID-19 news. Respondents who believe that the risk of illness is low and unreal, are less interested in news, feel more tired, avoid the news more often.
AB - Recognizing that regular information during a pandemic helps societies navigate through a period of insecurity, the aim of this study is to understand how news about different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic affects the attitude of media audiences towards news. This study seeks to explain the society’s news consumption and the attitude towards COVID-19 news in Latvia linking it to self-evaluation of the perceived disease risk. A national survey data (September 2020, N=1,005) analysis shows a statistically significant but weak correlation between disease risk self-evaluation and the attitude towards pandemic news. Respondents who rate the risk of the disease as higher and real are more interested in news, consume news to create a sense of security, feel less fatigue towards news, and are less likely to avoid COVID-19 news. Respondents who believe that the risk of illness is low and unreal, are less interested in news, feel more tired, avoid the news more often.
KW - COVID-19
KW - disease risk perception
KW - health behavior
KW - news avoidance
KW - news consumption
KW - news fatigue
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85134612855&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.30935/ojcmt/12026
DO - 10.30935/ojcmt/12026
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85134612855
SN - 1986-3497
VL - 12
SP - e202216
JO - Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies
JF - Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies
IS - 3
M1 - e202216
ER -