I can’t stop myself! Doomscrolling, conspiracy theories, and trust in social media

This study furthers understanding of doomscrolling – obsessively looking for bad news on a mobile device to the detriment of one's well-being – by examining reactions (negative feelings, information seeking, sharing) to doomscrolling. It also tests relationships among doomscrolling, belief in 2020 election conspiracy theories and trust in video- and text-based social media. Findings show that belief in conspiracies theories influences all three reactions to doomscrolling, but only sharing of doomscrolled information influences belief in conspiracy theories. Also, trust in text-based and video social media leads to negative reactions and information seeking, while trust in video social media promotes sharing doomscrolled news. Further, the more strongly survey respondents trust video-based social media, the more they believe conspiracy theories. But support for Trump during the 2020 election is the strongest predictor of belief in conspiracy theories, while support for Biden is a negative predictor.