Abstract
Many online information systems are delivering personalized news to users today. The essence of this personalization process is to match a news article to the reader’s self-identity. However, prior studies mostly focus on matching a positive news story to a person’s desired identity. No known research has discussed the possibility of matching a negative news story to a person’s undesired identity. This study aims to fill this theoretical gap by testing a three-way interaction effect among news valence, identity desirability, and uniqueness on attitude toward the news story. Through a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, it is shown that a positive news story tends to generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the reader’s desired self-identity, whereas a negative news story will generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the person’s undesired self-identity, and such an effect is especially pronounced when the identity is unique. Perceived news credibility is found to partially mediate these effects.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 890-912 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2020 |
Keywords
- identity desirability
- identity uniqueness
- news valence
- personalization
- personalized news
- self-identity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication