The effect of valenced news consumption on affect in situ

Shifts in the production, dissemination, and consumption of valenced news stories in recent years raise new questions concerning the effects of everyday news consumption on our affective experiences. In a sample of 203 (125 women, 77 men, 1 agender person; mean age = 38.04 years, SD=12.05) participants, we tested the effects of valenced news consumption on affective states as participants went about their daily lives using a 14-day, smartphone-based intensive repeated measures protocol consisting of two components: 1) a once-per-day experimental protocol in which participants were exposed to good news and bad news stories that were consistent across all participants and 2) a four-times-per-day naturalistic protocol designed to capture naturalistic fluctuations in valenced news consumption. Results show that across both experimental and naturalistic protocols, consumption of positively valenced news is associated with increased positive affect and decreased negative affect while consumption of negatively valenced news is associated with increased negative affect and decreased positive affect. These news consumption-affect associations are heightened when the news is deemed to be personally relevant to the target. By integrating intensive repeated measures and network science methodologies, news selection and news effects were simultaneously modeled and suggest that, in addition to media effects, selection processes whereby current affect predicts future news consumption also occur in daily life. Specifically, when positive affect is higher than usual, news consumed later in the day is more positively valenced than usual. Altogether, findings indicate that everyday news consumption has substantial effects on immediate positive and negative affect and may also serve mood management functions.