Boosting or Limiting? Examining How FoMO Influences Personal News Curation Through News Fatigue in Social Media

Abstract

While the theoretical framework of curated flows provides valuable insights into the dynamics of the social media environment, it overlooks the interactions between curators and the mechanisms pertaining to these interactions. This study argues that each curator can interact with one another, resulting in an interplay between different flows and shaping an individual’s information networks. Specifically focusing on personal news curation, this research argues that it can influence curated flows by signaling algorithms of user preferences. Furthermore, the affective mechanism of news curation has received limited attention. Drawing on the Stress-Strain-Outcome model, this study investigates how Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) manifests divergent effects on news-boosting and news-limiting curation via social media news fatigue. The findings, derived from a large-scale survey in a work-from-home context (N = 1198), reveal a noteworthy association: individuals experiencing FoMO are susceptible to news fatigue, leading them to prioritize being protected (news-limiting curation) than informed (news-boosting curation). This might contribute to a narrower news repertoire and influence the cultivation of informed citizens.