Emotional response as a cause of interpersonal news diffusion: The case of the space shuttle tragedy

Abstract

Studies of diffusion after major unanticipated news events have rarely examined what happens emotionally to people after they receive the news and how diffusion patterns interact with emotional reaction. Findings from this exploratory study of 105 college‐age respondents indicate that the need to cope with unsettling news helps drive both media use and interpersonal communication and that the rapid diffusion of such news is driven, in part, by the need to cope.