Abstract
Following online news and updates have become an ever-increasing part of life in the information age. Surprisingly, however, there is no standardized measurement to examine excessive news consumption in the online context. This study was conducted in order to address online news addiction by developing and validating a questionnaire. Furthermore, this study investigated psychological determinants and consequences of online news addiction. A 9-item questionnaire was developed to assess participants’ maladaptive online news consumption. Exploratory factor analysis suggested a one-factor model including 9 items, accounting for 51.47 of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis showed support for this one-factor model. The results revealed that the online news addiction questionnaire had acceptable internal consistency reliability. Future anxiety, fear of missing out on news, and interpersonal trust were associated with online news addiction. High future anxiety and fear of missing out on news predicted the tendency to consume news excessively. Contrarily, those with high interpersonal trust expressed lower online news addiction. Additionally, online news addiction was a significant predictor of problematic internet use. These findings increase knowledge of online news addiction and indicate that online news consumption can be viewed as potential addictive behavior that may contribute to problematic internet use.
Highlights
Internet addiction has become a popular concept used to describe excessive use of the internet combined with aspects of substance use disorders including withdrawal, tolerance, and negative repercussions (Simsek, Elciyar, & Kizilhan, 2019)
We initially examined the psychometric properties of the Online News Addiction Questionnaire (ONAQ)
The ONAQ is the first scale developed to measure online news addiction, which our research shows is a prominent factor in problematic internet use
Summary
Internet addiction has become a popular concept used to describe excessive use of the internet combined with aspects of substance use disorders including withdrawal, tolerance, and negative repercussions (Simsek, Elciyar, & Kizilhan, 2019). Rather than having a compulsive tendency to use the internet in general, individuals with internet addictions appear to develop compulsions for particular internet activities (e.g., gaming or social media; Griffiths & Szabo, 2014; Simsek et al, 2019). Though not officially recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5), internet gaming and social media addictions have been extensively researched and scales have been developed using DSM-5 criteria for substance use disorders (e.g., van den Eijnden, Lemmens, & Valkenburg, 2016). Shim making it easier than ever to access online news, there has been little investigation of the addictive properties of internet news checking. The main purpose of the present study is to develop a valid and reliable scale of online news addiction
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