Habits and Feelings Regarding COVID-19 News Coverage During Lockdown in Spain

Abstract

The home lockdown that took place due to the COVID-19 health crisis brought about changes in people’s dai-ly routines. One of these involved their habits when accessing news, which was even more prevalent in countries like Spain, one of those hardest hit by the disease and with one of the longest lockdowns. Using two online surveys based on quantitative and qualitative questions and a semi-structured inter-view, one (N=530) given during the first week of lockdown and the second (N=300) at month’s end, this article analyses news consumption to iden-tify changes in media access routines after one month of confinement. The results show that although there was a high level of interest in the news dur-ing the first week, time spent on news about the coronavirus subsequently decreased due to sensations such as information overload, stress or anxiety or the absence of novelty, and because people followed the media, social net-works and journalists more selectively. Respondents expressed criticism of dis-information, fake news, sensational-ism, lack of ethics among certain news outlets and constant doubt about the ideological intent of the information.