The need for topical and trustworthy information and news increase significantly during sudden unexpected events, such as health crises. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the demand for real-time information and news was even more urgent than usual during crises since the extent and severity of the health effects of the virus were unknown. Consuming news during the pandemic has thus been unavoidable, compelling, and even overwhelming. To produce new insights into the practices of using and making sense of information and news related to health crises, this paper explores the reception of the Covid-19 news coverage in Finland. Scholars have recognized the pivotal role of emotions in crisis communication and news reporting. The paper focuses on audiences’ emotions and affective practices in news reception.

Regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers have focused on the use of emotional appeals and fear-inducing messages in the news coverage (e.g., Hase & Engelke, 2022; Sowden et al., 2021; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020a). However, emotional appeals have been noticed to cause two-fold effects in the audience. First, they can increase risk awareness and motivate the public to act responsibly and assist in crisis management. Secondly, they may decrease journalistic focus on facts which may lead to declining trust in media relationships (Hase & Engelke, 2022; Wagner & Reifegerste, 2021). Today, the question of trust is a central challenge that journalists face in their everyday work. According to Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report (2022), declining interest and lower trust in the news are real problems, also news avoidance is growing in some groups. According to the report, Finland still holds the highest level of overall trust in news media (69%). It has been suggested that the increasingly polarized debates over topics such as Covid-19 restrictions may have impacted positively on the majority's trust in experts, institutions, and the news media (Reunanen, 2022).

A recent audience survey conducted in the Oulu region in Finland with 506 respondents examined the ways in which citizens provided and evaluated crisis information during the Covid-19 pandemic (Grönlund et al., 2022). The study shows that while trusting journalistic media, people also had critical views on Covid-19 news. This paper delves deeper into the same topic by examining media users’ emotions and affective practices evoked by Covid-19 pandemic coverage and communication in Finland. Our data consists of 14 qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted between May and August 2022. The interviews were held at the time when the strongest restrictions had been loosened, but people still remembered how it felt to live their everyday life under exceptional circumstances. The interviews consisted of three themes including questions on: 1) the use of media; 2) the development of trust and emotions; and 3) belonging to the local community. The interview data was transcribed and analysed qualitatively. First, we traced the sentences in which the interviewees spoke explicitly about their emotions: how they felt when they read news or provided information on the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on these perceptions, we categorized five main groups of emotions: (1) fear, (2) confusion, (3) frustration, (4) anger and (5) positive emotions. Second, we examined the affective practices that manifest the emotions described by the interviewees. In our study, we understand affects as dynamic, bodily intensities conducting activity in interaction with others and, therefore, perceive affects as affective practices that involve and require activity (Wetherell, 2012: 11–12). Finally, we scrutinized how the affective practices had shaped people’s relationship with the news media and official communication, especially regarding trust and confidence.

In line with previous studies, our findings show that continuous exposure to negative information caused overwhelming fear (e.g., Li, 2021; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021). Our interviewees described that their fear-evoking experiences led them to two kinds of affective practices: self-protection and thirst for knowledge. These affective practices appeared as avoiding news altogether, avoiding news from the official authorities and traditional media, searching for information from entirely alternative and contradictory sources, or increasingly exposing themselves to more information from traditional sources. These affective practices indicate that the Covid-19 news coverage was so penetrating, overwhelming, and distressing that it started to affect people’s trust and relationship with media and communication itself. However, those interviewees who described a relatively high level of trust before the outbreak expressed even stronger confidence in mainstream news media during the pandemic. In turn, those who felt intense fear and anxiety because of the exposure to the Covid-19 news, reported on the loss of trust.

Our study suggests that although information is desperately needed during health crises, contradictory and fluctuating news causes misunderstandings and might destabilize trust in mainstream media coverage. The confusion during such times is sustained by all the other parallel and conflicting news and communication that is shared and circulated by the audience themselves on social media.

References

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