The role of news consumption on influencers’ facebook pages in threat perception and political conservatism during times of COVID-19: a comparative study between the USA, Spain, and Egypt

• Autores: Reham Gamal Ahmed Salem Omar
• Directores de la Tesis: Andreu Casero Ripollés (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Jaume I ( España ) en 2022
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Dolors Palau-Sampio (presid.), Laura Alonso Muñoz (secret.), Vasco Ribeiro (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias de la Comunicación por la Universidad Jaume I de Castellón
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
• Resumen

  • This doctoral thesis tends to explore the news consumption on influencers' Facebook pages and the impact of such exposure on shaping threat perception. It also examines the correlation between the possible cultivated threat perception and political conservatism in its core aspects, inequality preference and resistance to change among Facebook users. For this, we used a quantitative methodology by disseminating an online survey of young adults (18-35 years) in the USA, Spain, and Egypt (n=1309). Results showed that the emergence of the COVID-19 health crisis led to the revival of the legacy media's role in citizens' news consumption habits as people turned to official media entities on Facebook to get their information. In addition, news consumption on influencers’ Facebook pages has the same cultivation impact as consuming news on any offline platform. Yet we detected some variations from the TV context. Nowadays young people are aware of the negative impact of their news consumption on shaping their reality. However, being aware did not mediate the cultivation effect of fear and terror due to hype news exposure. Such feelings of fear and threat led people to become very suggestible to any recommendation presented to them by digital influencers. In this sense, news consumption on Facebook influencers’ pages shaped people’s security preferences and political ideology in terms of being more politically conservative. Moreover, it led to a high degree of contradiction, confusion, and thus uncertainty, which interrupted the youths’ ability to know how they think, feel, and believe, consequently reinforcing the threat perception.