Explaining Mainstream News Media Use in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Partisanship, Perceptions of Threat, Negative Emotions, and News Media Trust

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States amid the 2020 presidential election campaign, the public health crisis rapidly developed into a polarizing political issue. Within the context of a politicized public health crisis, efforts to deepen a scholarly understanding of how people's information-seeking behaviors can be understood in relation to partisanship bear timely importance. In this light, this research aims to explore the relationship between partisanship and mainstream news media use in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study examines the role of perceived threat, negative emotions, and news media trust for helping to explain mainstream news media use. Analyses of data from a survey, conducted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 546), confirm that perceptions of threat, along with negative emotions stemming from perceived threat, play a mediating role between partisan identification and mainstream news media use. Moreover, this research also demonstrates that the mediated relationship between these factors varies, depending on people's perceptions of the news media's trustworthiness. The findings of the study contribute to deepening scholarly understanding of media consumption behaviors during times of a politicized public health crisis.