Lomonosov Psychology Journal
ISSN 0137-0936 (Print)
ISSN 2309-9852 (Online)
En Ru
ISSN 0137-0936 (Print)
ISSN 2309-9852 (Online)

The need for information and the attitude towards digital technologies as factors of critical and uncritical dissemination of pandemic news

Relevance. Modern society creates the image of a successful person as actively interacting with different information flows, including an impressive stream of news content. This paper assumes that there is a personal need for tracking and spreading news that develops in the interaction between a person and digital world. The individual level of this need could explain the interaction with information (its critical and uncritical dissemination) and the subjective experience of its redundancy and inaccuracy, including those experiences and actions in a pandemic situation. 

The aim of the study was to reveal the relationship of the subjective need for news with personal values, beliefs about technologies (“technophilia”) and the dissemination of news about the pandemic. 

Method. 270 people (aged 18 to 61) filled out The short (Schwartz) Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), Beliefs about New Technologies Questionnaire, Monitoring of Information about Coronavirus Scale as well as items on the subjective need for receiving and disseminating news, readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of news about pandemics, subjective experiences of redundancy and distrust of pandemic-related information. 

Results. According to the results, the Need for News Scale allows assessing the subjective importance of receiving news and discussing them with other people and is characterized by sufficient consistency and factor validity. The need for regular news is more pronounced among men, older people, people with higher education, married people, people who have children, while the need to discuss news is not related to sociodemographic factors. For people who are more prone to technophilia it is more important to regularly receive and discuss news information with others, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between technophilia and monitoring news about coronavirus. The need for news dissemination mediates the relationship between technophilia and readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of information about the pandemic.

Acknowledgement: The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No 18-18-00365 "Digital socialization of cultural-historical perspective: intragenerational and intergenerational analysis". 

References

  1. AsmolovA.G. (2014). Istoricheskiismyslkrizisakul'turno-deyatel'nostnoipsikhologii. Natsional'nyi psikhologicheskii zhurnal (National psychological journal), 1, 5–19. (in Russ.). 

  2. Bozhovich L.I. (2001). Problemy formirovaniya lichnosti: Izbrannye psikhologicheskie Trudy. Pod red. D.I. Fel'dshteina. Moscow: MPSI, Voronezh: MODEK. (in Russ.)

  3. Martsinkovskaya T.D. (2018) Psikhologicheskie aspekty tekhnologicheskogo obshchestva. Psikhologicheskie issledovaniya (Psychological Study), 11 (62), 12. (in Russ.).

  4. Rasskazova E.I., Emelin V.A., Tkhostov A.Sh. (2015). Diagnostika psikhologicheskikh posledstvii vliyaniya informatsionnykh tekhnologii na cheloveka. Moscow: Akropol'. (in Russ.).

  5. Soldatova G.U. (2018). Tsifrovaya sotsializatsiya v kul'turno-istoricheskoi paradigme: izmenyayushchiisya rebenok v izmenyayushchemsya mire. Sotsial'naya psikhologiya i obshchestvo (Social psychology and society), 3 (9), 71–80. (in Russ.).

  6. Tkhostov A.Sh., Rasskazova E.I. (2020). Psikhologicheskoe soderzhanie trevogi i profilaktiki v situatsii infodemii: zashchita ot koronavirusa ili «porochnyi krug» trevogi? Konsul'tativnaya psikhologiya i psikhoterapiya (Consulting psychology and psychotherapy), 2 (28), 70–89. (in Russ.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/cpp.2020280204

  7. Bartsch, A., Schneider, F.M. (2014). Entertainment and politics revisited: how non‐escapist forms of entertainment can stimulate political interest and information seeking. Journal of Communication, 64 (3): 369–396. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12095.

  8. European Social Survey, ESS (2008). ESS4-2008 documentation report [Electronic resource].URL: https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/docs/round4/survey/ESS4_data_documentation_report_e05_5.pdf

  9. Fritz, C.O., Morris, P.E., Richler, J.J. (2012). Effect size estimated: current use, calculations and interpretations. Journal of Experiemental Psychology: General, 141 (1), 2–18. 

  10. Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., Ardèvol-Abreu, A. (2017). Effects of the news-finds-me perception in communication: social media use implication for news seeking and learning about politics. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22 (3): 105–123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12185

  11. Hara, N., Sanfilippo, M.R. (2016). Co-constructing controversy: Content analysis of collaborative knowledge negotiation in online communities. Information, Communication & Society, 19, 1587–1604.

  12. Hermida, A. (2010). From TV to Twitter: How ambient news became ambient journalism. Media-culture Journal, 13. Retrieved from http://www.journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/ mcjournal/article/view/220

  13. Huang, Y.Zhao, N. (2020). Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: a web-based cross-sectional survey. Psychiatry Research, 12. DOI:10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112954

  14. Jang, S. Mo, Mckeever, B.W., Mckeever, R., Kim, J.K. (2019). From Social Media to Mainstream News: The Information Flow of the Vaccine-Autism Controversy in the US, Canada, and the UK, Health Communication, 34:1, 110–117. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1384433

  15. Kim, Y., Chen, H., & Gil de Zúñiga, H.(2013). Stumbling upon news on the internet: Effect of incidental news exposure and relative entertainment use on political participation. Computers in Human Behavior, 29:2607–2614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.06.005.

  16. Moghanibashi-Mansourieh A.( 2020). Assessing the anxiety level of Iranian general population during COVID-19 outbreak. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 18 (51). 
    DOI:10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102076

  17. Roy D., Tripathy S., Kar S.K., Sharma N., Verma S.K., Kaushal V. (2020). Study of knowledge, attitude, anxiety & perceived mental healthcare need in Indian population during COVID-19 pandemic. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 8(51):102083. 
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102083

  18. Schwartz, Sh. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2 (1). URL: https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116.

  19. Smith, J., Hewitt, B., & Skrbiš, Z. (2015). Digital socialization: young people's changing value orientations towards internet use between adolescence and early adulthood. Information, Communication & Society,18 (9), 1022–1038. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1007074

  20. Stornaiuolo, A.(2017). Contexts of Digital Socialization: Studying Adolescents' Interactions on Social Network Sites. Human Development, 60(5), 233–238. URL: https://doi.org/10.1159/000480341

  21. Tewksbury, D., Weaver, A.J., & Maddex, B.D.(2001). Accidentally informed: Incidental news exposure on the world wide web. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78, 533–554. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900107800309

  22. Tsfati, Y., Cappella, J.M.(2005). Why do people watch news they do not trust? The need for cognition as a moderator in the association between news media skepticism and exposure. Media Psychology, 7 (3): 251–271. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0703_2

  23. Wilson, K., Keelan, J.(2013). Social media and the empowering of opponents of medical technologies: The case of anti-vaccinationism. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15, e103.

Recieved: 10/04/2020

Accepted: 11/10/2020

Published: 03/30/2021

Keywords: need for information; dissemination of information; multitasking; technophilia; personal values; pandemic

Available online since: 30.03.2021

Issue 1, 2021