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Does a crisis change news habits? A comparative study of the effects of COVID-19 on news media use in 17 European countries

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posted on 2021-07-23, 15:58 authored by Peter Van Aelst, Fanni Toth, Laia Castro, Vaclav StetkaVaclav Stetka, Claes de Vreese, Toril Aalberg, Ana Sofia Cardenal, Nicoleta Corbu, Frank Esser, David Nicolas Hopman, Karolina Koc-Michalska, Jörg Matthes, Christian Schemer, Tamir Sheafer, Sergio Splendore, James StanyerJames Stanyer, Agnieszka Stepinska, Jesper Strömbäck, Yannis Theocharis
Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of ‘need for orientation’ and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both legacy news brands (TV, radio, newspapers) and so-called contemporary news media (Internet-based and social media) during this global health crisis. Our results show an overall rise of news use across countries, but only for some types of news media. We find an increase of TV news consumption, and a higher reliance on social media and the Internet for news and information. This indicates that in times of crises and an unusually strong need for orientation, people mainly turn to news sources that are easily available and offer a more immediate coverage. Furthermore, we find the rise in news use to be mainly present among those who already have a higher level of trust in legacy media and among people that were more concerned about the impact of the pandemic.

Funding

The Illiberal Turn? News Consumption, Polarization and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

Economic and Social Research Council

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History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Communication and Media

Published in

Digital Journalism

Volume

9

Issue

9

Pages

1316-1346

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Taylor & Francis

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Digital Journalism on 21 Jul 2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21670811.2021.1943481.

Acceptance date

2021-07-10

Publication date

2021-07-21

Copyright date

2021

ISSN

2167-0811

eISSN

2167-082X

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Vaclav Stetka. Deposit date: 23 July 2021

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