News avoidance or curation? Explicating the psychological process in news consumption on Facebook

This study investigates how people employ different news consumption strategies in the personalized but overloaded information environment. Specifically, we examine the psychological mechanisms of news curation and news avoidance through fear of missing out (FoMO) and news overload. An autoregressive analysis of two-wave panel data ( N  = 834) shows that news use indirectly affects both news consumption strategies first through FoMO and then through news overload on Facebook. More importantly, the indirect effect occurs only for those who engage in cross-cutting discussion at high and middle but not low levels. This finding addresses a classic dilemma: despite growing concern over increased news consumption, social media users are able to strike a balance between staying informed through news curation and protecting themselves from being overloaded by news avoidance. However, these strategies can be biased because users tend to personalize their information intake after encountering disagreeing viewpoints.