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 andsociety. For instance, depressing news about the unethical features orharmful effects of a product or a service (e.g., Maggi’s lead issue) can sig-nificantly impact their brand image among consumers. We focused onstudying whether consumers have a tendency to consume such negativenews through online platforms. While there exists a considerable amountof empirical research and industry reports illustrating the implications ofsuch news on businesses; interestingly, the consumer perspective on thesame is rarely studied. In the current study, the authors have developedand validated the psychometric properties of “Propensity to Doomscrolling”(PTD), which is an individual tendency to surf/scroll through large amountsof painful, disheartening and sad news on the Internet. We started our scalewith 12 items developed from qualitative interviews and existing literatureon doomscrolling and compulsive negative news consumption. The finalPTD scale consists of two subdimensions: perceived survival threat and fearof death, which can be measured through a seven-item scale proposed andinitially tested in this study.