Associations Between Valenced News and Affect in Daily Life: Experimental and Ecological Momentary Assessment Approaches

ABSTRACT

In 203 (mean age = 38.04 years, SD = 12.05) participants, we tested the association between valenced news and affect using a 14-day, smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment protocol consisting of two components: 1) a once-per-day experimental protocol in which participants were exposed to good news and bad news stories and 2) a four-times-per-day protocol capturing ecological fluctuations in news consumption. Across both protocols, we replicate findings that 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. By integrating the ecological momentary assessment data with network science methodologies, news selection and news effects were modeled simultaneously, uncovering selection processes whereby current positive affect, but not negative affect, predicted future valenced news consumption. Altogether, findings indicate that everyday news consumption influences positive and negative affect and may serve mood management functions for positive but not negative affect.

Acknowledgments

D.M.L acknowledges support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01 DA047417), the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and the Annenberg School for Communication. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Office or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/4g2r5/?view_only=623b958837b2439fbb5e2faac28f8dd8.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at https://osf.io/4g2r5/?view_only=623b958837b2439fbb5e2faac28f8dd8

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.