Abstract

Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of ‘need for orientation’ and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both legacy news brands (TV, radio, newspapers) and so-called contemporary news media (Internet-based and social media) during this global health crisis. Our results show an overall rise of news use across countries, but only for some types of news media. We find an increase of TV news consumption, and a higher reliance on social media and the Internet for news and information. This indicates that in times of crises and an unusually strong need for orientation, people mainly turn to news sources that are easily available and offer a more immediate coverage. Furthermore, we find the rise in news use to be mainly present among those who already have a higher level of trust in legacy media and among people that were more concerned about the impact of the pandemic.

摘要

像 COVID-19 大流行这样的外源性冲击引发了公共卫生之外的多个关于社会的基本问题。基于“需要导向”的经典概念和关于媒体在危机时期作用的文献，我们从比较的角度调查了 COVID-19 大流行在多大程度上影响了新闻消费。基于在 17 个主要是欧洲国家的两波小组调查，我们的研究针对传统新闻品牌（电视、广播、报纸）和所谓的当代新闻媒体（基于互联网和社交媒体）在全球健康期间的作用危机。我们的结果显示，各国新闻使用量总体上升，但仅限于某些类型的新闻媒体。我们发现电视新闻消费增加，对社交媒体和互联网的新闻和信息依赖程度更高。这表明，在危机和异常强烈的定向需求时期，人们主要转向易于获得且提供更直接报道的新闻来源。此外，我们发现新闻使用的增加主要出现在那些已经对传统媒体有更高信任度的人和更关心大流行影响的人中。