How do various media experiences (fear, uncertainty, fatigue and trust) and mental distress evolve over the course of a health crisis?
Our colleague Sophia Schaller from the EMPK Group has addressed this question in her new publication, which appeared today in Frontiers in Communication (Health Communication section).
The findings show that people experience health crisis reporting in very different ways, and their levels of mental distress also vary significantly.
Based on a three-wave panel study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, six distinct trajectory groups were identified. These ranged from resilient groups with consistently low levels of psychological distress, through individuals experiencing temporary distress, to groups with persistently elevated depressive symptoms. At the same time, the groups differed significantly in how they experienced news media coverage on the pandemic. The two groups of people experiencing the greatest mental distress exhibited the following patterns of media experiences:
🔹 high and fluctuating levels of fatigue, uncertainty and fear
🔹 consistently high trust in media coverage paired with high levels of fear
Women, people with lower psychological resilience and those who suffered more severely from the social consequences of the pandemic were more frequently found in these groups. Younger adults were also more likely to be in the group characterised by both high trust and high fear.
The findings underscore the importance of target-group-specific resilience programmes that include media-related modules on how to deal with (health) crisis information.
Link to the study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2026.1848549/full
We congratulate our colleague on the publication!
