When Losing Matters: Emotional Response to Political Loss and News Media Choice

Why are people attracted to certain news media outlets, and why do they abandon others? And what is the role of the larger political context in shaping such media use decisions? Relying on theories of mood management, we advance the argument that experiencing a political win or loss (e.g., one’s preferred party wins or loses an election) leads to positive and negative emotional responses, which, in turn, influence the choice to use media and the choice of news media outlets. To test these claims, we employ a survey experiment in which we expose respondents to news about Biden’s victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We measure both the length of their viewing and their emotional responses to the news before asking them to choose among three options: 1) to watch more news about Biden’s victory on MSNBC, 2) watch more news about Biden’s victory on Fox News or 3) to watch a series of television commercials for consumer products. We again measure both the length of viewing and people’s emotional responses. The experiment allows us to track people’s response to political victory and loss—and to better understand the psychological mechanisms behind such choices. Ultimately, we find that as people become less happy, they are less likely to engage in news media and more likely to choose non-political media to regulate emotions.