**5. Conclusions**

Since the pandemic began, COVID-19 has dominated the news cycle [27,63]. Moreover, along with the pandemic, there has been another attack on the public, termed the "infodemic" [64] as people have been exposed to an abundance of false information. People are maneuvering this media environment to get information and manage the emotional stress they are feeling. Our study takes a preliminary step toward examining the association between information seeking, use of various types of news media, and emotional health during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining emotional health is crucial in this situation, when people were primarily inside their homes and away from friends and family for months on end. The toll of this pandemic will not only be measured in terms of the loss of life, the long-term medical consequences, or the economic impact, but in terms of the emotional toll on the public.

**Author Contributions:** J.H. conceptualized the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript; P.B. conceptualized the study and wrote the manuscript; D.S. conceptualized the study and edited the manuscript; M.B. conceptualized the study, collected the data, and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was partially supported by Grant #AAI9733 from the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, awarded to Markus Brauer.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (IRB# 2020-0368).

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
