Effects of Disaster News on State Anxiety
Start Date
April 2020
End Date
April 2020
Major Field of Study
Psychology
Student Type
Undergraduate
Faculty Mentor(s)
Afshin Gharib, PhD
Presentation Format
Poster Presentation
Abstract/Description
This study will look at the relationship between receiving news about natural and man-made disasters through social media and the participants’ perceived stress following the news. This study will also be looking to see if there is a correlation between which disaster effort amongst the two types of disasters are people more willing to support (ie repost information about, investigate, donate money towards) along with looking at other factors such as age, gender, and prior disaster experience to determine any trends in the sample. I will solicit participants by visiting several classrooms at Dominican University with permission from the instructors, and a supporting signature enabling me to recruit students to take my survey. I’ll email the link of my survey to all of the students in the classrooms I visit, and I’ll be releasing the survey across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
My participants will begin the survey by filling out information pertaining to their age, gender, and previous disaster experience. Then they will fill out the Social Media Use Integration Scale questionnaire, Maree (2017) before being exposed to one of the two disaster news stories. After exposure to the disaster story, they will be expected to fill out the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (Levenstein, Prantera, Varvo et al., 1993). I hypothesize that people are going to feel more stress from man-made disasters than natural disasters, and that the frequency of exposure of disaster news through social media will have an added effect on participant stress.
Effects of Disaster News on State Anxiety
This study will look at the relationship between receiving news about natural and man-made disasters through social media and the participants’ perceived stress following the news. This study will also be looking to see if there is a correlation between which disaster effort amongst the two types of disasters are people more willing to support (ie repost information about, investigate, donate money towards) along with looking at other factors such as age, gender, and prior disaster experience to determine any trends in the sample. I will solicit participants by visiting several classrooms at Dominican University with permission from the instructors, and a supporting signature enabling me to recruit students to take my survey. I’ll email the link of my survey to all of the students in the classrooms I visit, and I’ll be releasing the survey across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
My participants will begin the survey by filling out information pertaining to their age, gender, and previous disaster experience. Then they will fill out the Social Media Use Integration Scale questionnaire, Maree (2017) before being exposed to one of the two disaster news stories. After exposure to the disaster story, they will be expected to fill out the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (Levenstein, Prantera, Varvo et al., 1993). I hypothesize that people are going to feel more stress from man-made disasters than natural disasters, and that the frequency of exposure of disaster news through social media will have an added effect on participant stress.
Comments
This presentation was accepted for the Scholarly and Creative Works Conference at Dominican University of California. The Conference was canceled due to the Covid-19 Pandemic