TY - JOUR
T1 - News consumption and its unpleasant side effect
T2 - Studying the effect of hard and soft news exposure on mental well-being over time
AU - Boukes, Mark
AU - Vliegenthart, Rens
N1 - Funding Information:
This study has been made possible by a Vidi grant (project number: 016.145.369) from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Hogrefe Publishing.
PY - 2017/7
Y1 - 2017/7
N2 - Following the news is generally understood to be crucial for democracy as it allows citizens to politically participate in an informed manner; yet, one may wonder about the unintended side effects it has for the mental well-being of citizens. With news focusing on the negative and worrisome events in the world, framing that evokes a sense of powerlessness, and lack of entertainment value, this study hypothesizes that news consumption decreases mental well-being via negative hedonic experiences; thereby, we differentiate between hard and soft news. Using a panel survey in combination with latent growth curve modeling (n = 2,767), we demonstrate that the consumption of hard news television programs has a negative effect on the development of mental well-being over time. Soft news consumption, by contrast, has a marginally positive impact on the trend in well-being. This can be explained by the differential topic focus, framing and style of soft news vis-à-vis hard news. Investigating the effects of news consumption on mental well-being provides insight into the impact news exposure has on variables other than the political ones which definitively are not less societally relevant.
AB - Following the news is generally understood to be crucial for democracy as it allows citizens to politically participate in an informed manner; yet, one may wonder about the unintended side effects it has for the mental well-being of citizens. With news focusing on the negative and worrisome events in the world, framing that evokes a sense of powerlessness, and lack of entertainment value, this study hypothesizes that news consumption decreases mental well-being via negative hedonic experiences; thereby, we differentiate between hard and soft news. Using a panel survey in combination with latent growth curve modeling (n = 2,767), we demonstrate that the consumption of hard news television programs has a negative effect on the development of mental well-being over time. Soft news consumption, by contrast, has a marginally positive impact on the trend in well-being. This can be explained by the differential topic focus, framing and style of soft news vis-à-vis hard news. Investigating the effects of news consumption on mental well-being provides insight into the impact news exposure has on variables other than the political ones which definitively are not less societally relevant.
KW - Hard versus soft news
KW - Hedonic experiences
KW - Mental well-being
KW - Negativity
KW - News consumption
U2 - 10.1027/1864-1105/a000224
DO - 10.1027/1864-1105/a000224
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85028996367
VL - 29
SP - 137
EP - 147
JO - Journal of Media Psychology
JF - Journal of Media Psychology
SN - 1864-1105
IS - 3
ER -