“I Know News Will Find Me”: Examining the Relationship Between the “News-Finds-Me” Perception and COVID-19 Misperceptions

ABSTRACT

In the current media environment, some individuals have shifted from actively monitoring news toward passively waiting for the media to alert them about news to a certain extent, forming a “news-finds-me” (NFM) perception. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey (N = 906) of adults from the United States, this study investigates the relationship between the NFM perception and COVID-19 misperceptions. Findings demonstrated a positive association between NFM perception and misperceptions. Moreover, information avoidance mediated the relationship between NFM and misperception. Finally, need for cognition (NFC) was a significant moderator, such that among those with greater NFC, the indirect effect of NFM perception on misperceptions became weaker. Findings of this study can contribute to the literature of NFM perception in health contexts and provide useful guidelines for combating misinformation and misperceptions in the algorithm-generated information environment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2300902.

Notes

1. See Supplemental material for full descriptive statistics of the sample.

2. See Supplemental material for detailed measurements of all variables.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by Shanghai Pujiang Program [grant number 22PJC062].