**1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only disrupted basic everyday activities, but also fostered emotional distress [1–3]. After isolated cases and clusters started appearing in the early months of 2020, by March the U.S. saw rapidly increasing case counts indicating community transmission [4]. With COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March and a national emergency by the Trump administration on 13 March, states implemented shelter-in-place or stay at home orders [5], potentially contributing to unease and mental distress. Research documenting the extent of emotional distress during the COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly emerging (e.g., [1,2,6,7]). This research builds on work showing that there is a significant relationship between the occurrence of infectious disease outbreaks and negative psychological consequences. For example, people are likely to develop greater incidence of depression [8], psychological distress [8,9], and anxiety [10] during pandemics.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, individuals have sought to understand basic information related to the virus such as its impact, effective treatment, and vaccine development [11]. The

**Citation:** Hwang, J.; Borah, P.; Shah, D.; Brauer, M. The Relationship among COVID-19 Information Seeking, News Media Use, and Emotional Distress at the Onset of the Pandemic. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 13198. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413198

Academic Editors: Paolo Roma, Merylin Monaro, Cristina Mazza and Pasquale Caponnetto

Received: 16 October 2021 Accepted: 10 December 2021 Published: 14 December 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

lack of predictability, the rising number of confirmed cases and deaths, and changing health guidelines led wide swaths of the public to seek information about the pandemic [12]. In fact, according to a report from the Pew Research Center, 70% of U.S. citizens searched online for information about the coronavirus in the early months of the pandemic [13].

Several theories and empirical findings suggest a positive relationship between information seeking and emotional distress especially during crises. In fact, information seeking about negative events such as natural disasters [14,15], terrorism [16,17], and pandemics [18] is linked to emotional distress. Moreover, following the reliance on heuristics under uncertainty [19,20], an unprecedented amount of information may cause emotional distress. So, when confronted by intense media coverage about COVID-19, people may perceive higher levels of threat, which, in turn, may trigger higher stress. Finally, people might be incapable of avoiding information seeking because of the need-to-know basic information, such as the symptoms of infection.

Information seeking, as a proxy for attention paid to COVID-19 news, may interact with the news source through which information is consumed. Specific combinations of attention and exposure may also be related to emotional distress, with certain types of news sources more likely to spur strong emotions (e.g., [21,22]). Particularly for television, attention must be considered alongside exposure [23,24], especially considering the unique capabilities of video for conveying emotions [17]. This is because news on television features vivid images, motion and sound, whereas newspapers emphasize text and limited use of visuals. Taking into account the medium through which people find news during the COVID-19 pandemic may explain distress mechanisms. Furthermore, the types of media through which individuals find news may moderate the relationship between information seeking and emotional distress. For example, if an individual tends to rely on television as a source for news and is seeking information about COVID-19, the modality of this medium may amplify the association between information seeking and emotional distress beyond the direct relationship of each factor.

Using a U.S. national survey, we examine: (1) the link between information seeking concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and individuals' emotional distress, (2) the relationship between reliance on television, newspapers, and social media as sources for news exposure on emotional distress during the pandemic after accounting for COVID-19 information seeking, and (3) the interaction between information seeking about COVID-19 and use of these news media sources on emotional distress. In doing so, our study attempts to understand the psychological toll of information seeking and news media use during an ongoing pandemic. Understanding these relationships is critical because seeking information via news media has been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, at the same time, the contentiousness of partisan news and the presentational styles of some media forms about the pandemic could lead to emotional distress. In this study, we attempt to unpack these relationships.
