Negative brand news, social media, and the propensity to doomscrolling: measuring and validating a new scale

Abstract

Negative media coverage can have a significant impact on businesses and society. For instance, depressing news about the unethical features or harmful effects of a product or a service (e.g., Maggi’s lead issue) can significantly impact their brand image among consumers. We focused on studying whether consumers have a tendency to consume such negative news through online platforms. While there exists a considerable amount of empirical research and industry reports illustrating the implications of such news on businesses; interestingly, the consumer perspective on the same is rarely studied. In the current study, the authors have developed and validated the psychometric properties of “Propensity to Doomscrolling” (PTD), which is an individual tendency to surf/scroll through large amounts of painful, disheartening and sad news on the Internet. We started our scale with 12 items developed from qualitative interviews and existing literature on doomscrolling and compulsive negative news consumption. The final PTD scale consists of two subdimensions: perceived survival threat and fear of death, which can be measured through a seven-item scale proposed and initially tested in this study.

Keywords:

• Doomscrolling
• negative news
• perceived survival threat
• scale development

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anshul Mandliya

Anshul Mandliya Anshul is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the Goa Institute of Management, Goa (India).

Jatin Pandey

Jatin Pandey is an Associate Professor in the Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management area of the Indian Institute of Management Indore. He is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He has worked as an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources area at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. He was awarded the Junior Research Fellowship by U.G.C. and the Best Thesis award for his doctoral work by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, where he also assisted in the Seventh Pay Commission consultancy team. He was the Seventh I.I.M. Indore Young Faculty Research Chair and has been awarded the Best Teacher award at I.I.M. Indore multiple times. His research articles have appeared in national and international journals with high citations. He has also presented his research in reputed national and international conferences. He has co-authored three books, the first on Geographic Information System published by T ERI, the second on H.R. Analytics published by Sage and the third on People Analytics published by Taylor & Francis. He has also been co-guest editor of special issues in international journals of repute.

Yusuf Hassan

Yusuf Hassan is serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida, FL, USA. Previously, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Birmingham and Rochester Institute of Technology. He did his PhD in Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management from the Indian Institute of Management Indore (India). His research interests lie at the intersection of talent management, authenticity and knowledge management.

Abhishek Behl

Abhishek Behl is an Assistant Professor in the area of information technology and analytics. He has earned his second PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay where his research is in the area of crowdfunding and gamification. He is a winner of the prestigious “Naik and Rastogi award for excellence in Ph.D.” from IIT Bombay. He holds a rich experience in teaching, research and consultancy. He has taught subjects like Business Analytics; Marketing Analytics; Digital Marketing; Marketing Research. He has also served as a Senior Manager-Research at Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad. His research is in the area of transforming digital landscapes and decision sciences with a focus on gamification, stakeholder engagement, sustainability, and e-commerce start-ups.

Ishizaka Alessio

Ishizaka Alessio is a Distinguished Professor in Decision Analysis. He was Head of the Information Systems, Supply Chain and Decision making Department from 2019 to 2022. He was also research lead and Deputy Director of the Centre of Operational Research and Logistics at the University of Portsmouth. He received his PhD from the University of Basel (Switzerland). He worked successively for the University of Exeter (UK), University of York (UK) and Audencia Grande Ecole de Management Nantes (France). He has been visiting professor in several universities in Italy, France and Germany. His research is in the area of decision analysis, where he has published more than 120 papers. He is regularly involved in large European funded projects. He has been the chair, co-organiser and guest speaker of several conferences on this topic. He wrote the indispensible textbook Multicriteria Decision Analysis: methods and software.