Moon, Peifer examine partisanship and mainstream news media use during COVID-19
A new article by Media School doctoral candidate Junghyun Moon and associate professor Jason Peifer explores how citizens’ use of news media during a politicized public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, can be understood through the lens of partisan identification.
Their work “Explaining Mainstream News Media Use in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Partisanship, Perceptions of Threat, Negative Emotions, and News Media Trust,” was published July 5 in Mass Communication and Society.
The article was based on a study utilizing survey data collected during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. At a basic level, the study supports existing evidence that, in the context of the pandemic, individuals who identified as Democrats were more likely to consume mainstream news media compared to those who identified as Republicans.
Moon and Peifer also found evidence that perceptions of threat — and negative emotions that stem from those perceptions — mediate the relationship between partisanship and mainstream news media use. These findings highlight that this mediated relationship varies depending on individuals’ perceptions of the trustworthiness of news media.
The project was supported by IU’s Arts and Humanities Council and the New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Program.