Doomscrolling, Monitoring and Avoiding: News Use in COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown
Doomscrolling, Monitoring and Avoiding: News Use in COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown
复制标题
DOI：
10.1080/1461670x.2021.1952475
复制
发表时间：
2021-07-15
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Moe, Hallvard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ytre-Arne, Brita;Moe, Hallvard
本文分析了COVID-19大流行期间的新闻使用，探讨了人们在非常情况下如何在相互冲突的信息需求和断开连接之间取得平衡。我们分析了在2020年3月至4月（疫情封锁初期）对挪威媒体用户进行的定性问卷调查的经验数据。严重的封锁环境突出了对不断更新的新闻流的强化监测，以及对新闻使用的身临其境和情感枯竭的看法，正如“末日滚动”概念所反映的那样。为了科普害怕或不知所措的感觉，即使是最有联系的公民也会故意和不情愿地回避新闻。讨论这些发现在新闻学研究中的新闻回避的争论，我们认为理解新闻回避作为一种情境策略的相关性。我们的结论是，新闻回避的概念仍然是相关的定性理解人类的经验，希望避免在特定的情况下新闻。我们的分析进一步概述了流行病新闻使用的不同做法之间的相互联系，包括基于研究的末日滚动概念化现象。
This paper analyzes news use during the COVID-19 pandemic, asking how people balance between conflicting needs for information and disconnection in an extraordinary situation. We analyze empirical data from a qualitative questionnaire study of Norwegian media users conducted in March-April 2020, a period of early pandemic lockdown. The acute lockdown context accentuated intensified monitoring of constantly updated news streams, and perceptions of news use as immersive and emotionally draining, as captured in the notion of "doomscrolling". To cope with feelings of being scared or overwhelmed, even the most connected citizens deliberately and intermittingly avoided news. Discussing these findings in light of the debate on news avoidance in journalism studies, we argue for the relevance of understanding news avoidance as a situational strategy. We conclude that the concept of news avoidance remains relevant to qualitatively understand a human experience of wanting to avoid news in particular contexts. Our analysis further outlines interconnections between different practices of pandemic news use, including a research-based conceptualization of doomscrolling as a phenomenon.