Research Article

From Lower Disease Risk Perception to Higher News Avoidance: Analysis of News Consumption and Attitude Toward COVID-19 News in Latvia

Sandra Murinska 1 * , Anda Rožukalne 2 , Ieva Strode 3
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1 Rezekne Academy of Technologies, LATVIA2 Riga Stradiņš University, LATVIA3 University of Latvia, LATVIA* Corresponding Author
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 12(3), July 2022, e202216, https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/12026
Published: 16 April 2022
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ABSTRACT

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.
Keywords: news consumption, news avoidance, news fatigue, disease risk perception, health behavior, COVID-19

CITATION (APA)

Murinska, S., Rožukalne, A., & Strode, I. (2022). From Lower Disease Risk Perception to Higher News Avoidance: Analysis of News Consumption and Attitude Toward COVID-19 News in Latvia. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 12(3), e202216. https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/12026

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