10.4185/RLCS-2020-1425
Research

Emotions and news on social media about climate change sharing. Moderating role of habits, previous attitudes and uses and gratifications among University students

Emociones y difusión de noticias sobre el cambio climático en redes sociales. Influencia de hábitos, actitudes previas y usos y gratificaciones en universitarios

Francisco Segado-Boj1
Jesús Díaz-Campo1
Nuria Navarro-Sierra2

1International University of La Rioja. Spain
2Rey Juan Carlos University. Spain

ABSTRACT
Introduction. This article analyzes the influence of emotions on users’ intention to share news about climate change on social media. Media consumption habits, previous attitudes towards the issue and social media uses and gratifications sought are considered as moderating roles.
Methodology. An online, self-administered, questionnaire was submitted to a sample of undergraduate students from different courses and centers placed at Madrid region. Data were statistically tested following simple and multiple linear regression, simple and multiple logistic regression and simple and multiple ordinal regression models.
Results and conclusions. It is concluded that fear and anger are the most influential emotions on users’ intention to share a piece of news on social media. Information seeking, news internalizing and previous attitudes are identified as moderating factors.

KEYWORDS: Climate change; social media; emotions; uses and gratifications theory; news consumption habits.

RESUMEN
Introducción. Esta investigación analiza la influencia que ejercen las emociones a la hora de decidir si se comparten las noticias sobre el cambio climático en redes sociales. Se estudia la función moderadora de los hábitos mediáticos, las actitudes previas y los usos y gratificaciones en esa decisión.
Metodología. Se remitió un cuestionario online a una muestra de estudiantes universitarios de distintas titulaciones y centros de la Comunidad de Madrid. Los datos obtenidos fueron tratados estadísticamente según los modelos de regresión lineal simple y múltiple, de regresión logística simple y múltiple, y de regresión ordinal simple y múltiple.
Resultados. El miedo y la rabia influyen en que una noticia relativa al cambio climático se comparta o no. La búsqueda de información, el consumo de noticias y el grado de preocupación previa son factores que moderan esa influencia.

PALABRAS CLAVE: cambio climático; redes sociales; emociones; teoría de los usos y gratificaciones; hábitos de consumo informativo.

Correspondencia:
Francisco Segado-Boj. International University of La Rioja. Spain
francisco.segado@unir.net
Jesús Díaz-Campo. International University of La Rioja. Spain
jesus.diaz@unir.net
Nuria Navarro-Sierra. Rey Juan Carlos University. España.
nuria.navarro.sierra@urjc.es

Received: 01/04/2019.
Accepted: 30/04/2019.
Published: 15/01/2020.

This article is product of the Research project titled “Consumo de noticias en medios sociales. Análisis de factores en la selección y difusión de contenidos mediáticos” [EN: “News consumption on social media. Analysis of factors on the selection and dissemination of media content”], reference CSO2017-86312-R financed by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), within the 2017 call for projects R+D+I help, corresponding to the State Program of Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to Society Challenges within the State Plan of Scientific and Technical and Innovation Research 2013-2016 framework. Dates: Start date of research: March 15th, 2017. End date of research: September 20th, 2018.

How to cite this article / Standard reference: Segado-Boj, F., Díaz-Campo, J. & Navarro-Sierra, N. (2020). Emotions and news on social media about climate change sharing. Moderating role of habits, previous attitudes and uses and gratifications among University students. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 75, 245-269. https://www.doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2020-1425

CONTENTS
1. Introduction, 1.1. Emotions and news dissemination 1.2. Social media and climate change, 1.3. Emotions and climate change, 1.4. Uses and Gratifications, 1.5. Justification and objectives, 2. Methodology, 2.1. Statistical tests, 3. Results, 3.1. Influence of emotions in the intention to share the news, 3.2. Moderating role of uses and gratifications sought, 3.3. Moderating role of news internalization and externalization, 3.4. Moderating role of interest, knowledge and previous attitudes, 4. Discussion and conclusions, 4.1. Limitations and further research, 5. References, 5.1. Related articles.

Translation by Carlos Javier Rivas Quintero (University of the Andes, Mérida, Venezuela).

1. Introduction

The contemporary media ecosystem is in a profound transformation (Velásquez et al., 2018). One of the most profound changes on this aspect is the social media emergency as conduit for news and other media contents dissemination and consumption (Bright, 2016).
Platforms like Twitter or Facebook have become new windows and conduits for news distribution and, as a consequence, the way citizens access information and how they get in touch with issues of political and civil interest has changed (Kalsnes & Larsson, 2018). In the specific case of Spain, 48% of online surfers use Facebook to read, find, share or comment on news (Amoedo, Vara-Miguel, & Negredo, 2018).
Users are no longer the final recipients in a transmission line, rather nodes within a network, so their function is no longer limited to receiving information in a passive way, but also to participate in an active manner in the media content dissemination and distribution (Klinger; Svensson, 2016). This new role users have has been labeled secondary gatekeeping (Singer, 2014), distributed content by the user (Villi & Matikainen, 2015) or re-dissemination (Guallar, Suau, Ruiz-Caballero, Sáez, & Masip, 2016).
This picture has led media companies to design and implement strategies to maximize their content dissemination on social media. In a specific way, news companies have used social media to widen the scope of their content (Villi & Noguera-Vivo, 2017) and, concurrently, to generate a greater involvement from their audience (Martín-Quevedo, Fernández-Gómez & Segado-Boj, 2019). This tendency has led media to develop and implement new logics for informative and news values, different from the traditional media ones (Larsson, 2018; Lischka, 2018).

1.1. Emotions and news dissemination

Among these new emphasized newsworthy attributes, the emotional aspect of the piece of news stands out prominently, since the content that triggers a more intense emotional reaction is susceptible of being shared by users (Kilgo, Lough, & Riedl, 2017). Users’ emotional wording is, among other aspects, like personality or the uses and gratifications, one of the factors that explain the decision of users of sharing content on social media (Dafonte-Gómez, 2018).
According to the Emotional Broadcaster Theory, individuals have the innate necessity of sharing experiences. Sharing emotional news through social networks is one of the ways through which this necessity can be satisfied (Harber & Cohen, 2005).
In this sense, the audience shares on the Internet in a preferable manner those articles that trigger more intense emotions (Berger & Milkman, 2012; Weeks & Holbert, 2013). Consequently, those publications that express some type of emotion are shared more frequently than content with neutral mood (Keib, Himelboim, & Han, 2018; Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013).
However, there is evidence of the type of emotions that foster a piece of news to be shared. On one side there are studies that affirm that users preferably choose information that triggers negative emotions such as fear or concern (Cappella, Kim, & Albarracín, 2015) (Yang, Kahlor, & Griffin, 2014), but other researches affirm that news of a positive mood are more shared than the ones that trigger anger or concern (Al-Rawi, 2017).

1.2. Social media and climate change

On another note, social media has been positively associated to political participation (Boulianne, 2015) and to civil commitment (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012) hence there has been some links found between the intensity of usage of these tools and the level of involvement and participation on political issues of a society. Therefore, social media also has the potential to increase societies’ commitment regarding climate change (Katz-Kimchi & Manosevitch, 2015). These platforms can raise the attention drawn to these issues and make actions of protest noticeable (Thorson, Edgerly, Kligler-Vilenchik, Xu, & Wang, 2016) or put in contact users, experts and advocacy groups (Lee, Vandyke, & Cummins, 2018). In fact, the use of social networks for political information has been positively linked to greater levels of environmental commitment (Zhang & Skoric, 2018).
However, the authors of this research haven’t found studies that analyze the factors that cause what contents or specific news about climate change are shared by citizens on social media. Scientific production about this matter has been focused on the way in which Twitter has covered events such as the Paris Agreement (Hopke & Hestres, 2018) and the discussion terms and dynamics among users about climate change on Twitter (Anderson & Huntington, 2017) and on Youtube (Shapiro & Park, 2018).

1.3. Emotions and climate change

Emotions are linked directly to the persuasive effect of messages (Wirz, 2018). Therefore, emotions are clear moderators on the effects and internalization of messages about climate change (Feldman & Hart, 2016). Likewise, messages with emotional content can contribute to raise awareness of the commitment against climate change and the change of attitudes (Nabi, Gustafson, & Jensen, 2018). However, is has been noted that emotional representations on climate change can reinforce the public’s commitment about it, but also divert the attention away from the very phenomenon (Höijer, 2010).
It has been specifically pointed out that fear can foster attitudes in favor of the environment (Hartmann, Apaolaza, D’Souza, Barrutia, & Echebarria, 2014) and that hope is related to a bigger interest regarding climate change (Chadwick, 2015).
However, not only the type of emotion, but also the intensity of that emotion, can influence on how the message affects the public. For example, messages with a low level of fear generate a greater intention of adapting pro environmental attitudes than the messages that try to produce more fear (Chen, 2016).

1.4. Uses and gratifications

On another note, the use of any source is neither uniform nor universal, but depends on the anticipated expectations and rewards by each individual when approaching said sources. These expected uses and gratifications can influence on the effects of media consumption (McLeod, 2000). Therefore, the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGTtheory) has been used to explain changes on some media effects related to consumption and media selection. In this way, different expectations lead to different use patterns of the media. Thereby, different motivations for social media usage are tied to different attitudes when consuming or sharing news on these settings (Choi, 2016b).
The uses and gratifications more connected to changes in the way news are shared and consumed on social media are the ones related to social interaction, self-image management and information seeking (Lee & Ma, 2012).
The social type motivations, that is, those that refer to the intention of communicating and interacting with others (Whiting & Williams, 2013) influence on the type of content that users opt to share (Coppini et al., 2017). On the other hand, users led by their self-image management, meaning the construction and projection of their public image (Krämer & Winter, 2008) tend to avoid sharing negative or controversial content (Hossain et al., 2018). Finally, the uses and gratifications linked to information seeking, meaning the informational and self-education needs (Korgaonkar & Wolin, 1999) also influence on news consumption (Winter et al., 2016).

1.5. Justification and objectives

Previous studies on the effect of emotions when sharing information (Yang et al., 2014) provide data and evidence limited to the American context. Therefore, this article seeks to contribute information in another cultural context that can help understand better the role of emotions on news sharing and dissemination.
Due to the relevant role emotions play in environmental communication (Nabi et al., 2018) and the increasingly relevant position social media hold as a news dissemination channel, this research intends to explain the influence emotions wield over the decision of sharing an article about climate change or not.
Based on this first objective we ask the research question RQ1: “What emotion is more relevant when sharing a piece of news about climate change on social media?”
In a complementary manner to this research, and consequently to the explained state of the art, we also propose hypothesis H1: “Negative emotions are correlated with the intention of sharing a piece of news on social media”.
Another objective from this research consists on measuring the moderating role other factors wield over this emotional influence on the decision of sharing a piece of news about climate change on social media.
RQ2: What uses and gratifications sought on social media will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about climate change?
We have considered gratifications that, according to scientific literature, influence most on users when sharing news on social media (Lee & Ma, 2012): “Self-image management”, “Information seeking” and “Social interaction”. The first one of them, “Self-image management”, refers to those aspects that allow users to construct and project a presentation of their persona on social media (Krämer; Winter, 2008). “Information seeking”, implies that users choose the source for their own education and to satisfy informational needs (Korgaonkar; Wolin, 1999). Finally, “Social interaction”, refers to the intention of communicating and interacting with others (Whiting; Williams, 2013).
On another note, the effects of media exposure and the information consumption patterns are conditioned by the very own group of habits and patterns of each user (LaRose & Eastin, 2004). In this sense, the audience does not perform a new rational and conscious exercise every time it wants to look up for news or media content, but it relies on a preset repertoire of technological platforms, sources and specific publications. Therefore, citizens can opt to receive their news through traditional media or seek that content on digital media. This choice affects the rest of their involvement with the news (sharing or giving a “like”). In fact, those users who depend more on digital media have proven to be more active in this type of habits (Choi, 2016b; Karnowski, Leonhard & Kümpel, 2018).
As mentioned before, social networks not only work as an information consumption conduit, but also represent a secondary channel for news dissemination. In this sense Choi (2016b) suggests that users’ habits on social networks must be differentiated between news internalization (how users receive news on social networks) and news externalization (how users share news on social networks).
Therefore, given the role that media habits play, we ask the research question RQ3: “What informational consumption habits on social networks will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about climate change?”
On the other hand, in the political communication field it has been proven that previous attitudes and opinions can influence and soften the emotional reaction caused by the messages (Feldman & Hart, 2016; Haseel & Weeks, 2016). It is why we want to verify if these previous attitudes towards climate change can moderate the emotional influence when sharing a piece of news on social media, therefore we ask the following research question RQ4: “What previous attitudes towards climate change will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media?”
Similarly, it has been pointed out that previous knowledge about a topic has a decisive role when reading information that users find incidentally on social networks (Karnowski et al., 2017). On the same token, the level of previous knowledge about a topic is one of the main factors that spark discussion and news comments about climate change (Taddicken & Reif, 2016). That is why we propose hypothesis 2 H2: “Previous knowledge about climate change will moderate the influence of emotions on the intention of sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media”. Additionally, we propose a complementary hypothesis aimed not much to the previous knowledge level, but to the existing interest in the topic. Hence hypothesis H3: “The previous level of concern about climate change will moderate the influence of emotions on the intention of sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media”.

2. Methodology

An online, self-administered, questionnaire was submitted to a sample (n=96) of undergraduate students of all universities (public and private) of the Madrid Community, coming from different courses to avoid a homogeneous profile related to their education. A sociological studies company was in charge of recruiting the participants randomly, who were invited to be part of the study in exchange of a 25€ gift check to buy in department stores. The answers were collected from May 5th to July 3rd 2017.
The size of the sample is aligned with similar studies that analyze the way in which certain factors influence on the perception of a piece of news or a particular issue (see examples such as: Da Silva & Pereira, 2017; Gerber et al., 2017; Penney & Abbott, 2015).
The average age of the participants was from 20 to 23 years old (standard deviation=3). 61.46% of the participants were woman and 38.54% men. The participants answered an online self-administered questionnaire.
The universe of study was focused on young adults since it is an especially active demographic segment when it comes to sharing and consuming online news (Antunovic, Parsons, & Cooke, 2018). This allows us to expect their habits to set and develop the evolution of trends when sharing news (Bobkowski, 2015).
As follows, the scales and metrics used on the questionnaire are detailed. The internal consistency has been measured with Cronbach’s Alfa, indicated in the table corresponding to every construct with the “α” symbol. To measure the participants’ news consumption habits on social media we used the constructs “News internalization” (meaning how often users receive and read news) and “News externalization” (the frequency in which they share news) and the respective defined scales by Choi (2016a). To do so we obtained the summation of the answers in a Likert Scale (1=”Never”, 7=”Everyday”) as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Metrics of news consumption habits.
table1
Source: Choi & Lee, 2015.

Following Hyun & Kim (2015), the level of previous knowledge about climate change has been computed with the summation of right answers to a group of questions that users had to respond with “true” or “false”. Every right answer was punctuated with “one”, while the wrong answers did not accumulate any points (average=1.54, standard deviation=0.87) (See Table 2)

Table 2. Questions about climate change knowledge.
table2
Source: Hyun & Kim (2015).

The general concern about climate change was evaluated through just one Likert type question (1=”Not concerned at all”, 7=”Very concerned”). The used questions to measure the different attitudes of users regarding climate change are shown in Table 3

Table 3. Questions about attitudes regarding climate change.
table3
Source: author’s own creation.

The uses and gratifications considered on the study were constructed as the summation of the independent Likert type questions (1=”Totally disagree”, 7=”Totally agree”) shown in Table 4 and adapted from (Gao & Feng, 2016).

Table 4. Metrics for the uses and gratifications on social media.

table4

Source: Gao & Feng, 2016.

Once these questions were answered the form requested the participants to read a piece of news about the effects of climate change. The text and images on the article (taken from: La Vanguardia, 2017) did not include references to its source, or any other text. Once the news was read, the participants had to measure the emotional response through a set of Likert type questions shown in Table 5 (1=”I did not feel this emotion at all”, 7=”I felt this emotion strongly”).

Table 5. Emotions.
table5
Source: author’s own creation.

Based on these metrics we elaborated an intensity index of the negative emotions registered with the summation of the scores gotten on fear, anger, sadness and concern (average=18.08, standard deviation=6.03).
Finally, the participants had to answer the question: “Would you share the piece of news you have read on social media?” The form only allowed to answer “Yes” or “No”.

2.1. Statistical Tests

The statistical model used was:

These models are typical in other similar studies such as in Communication (Chyi & Yang, 2009; Stempel, Hargrove, & Stempel, 2007), and other disciplines, (Kaufman, Dwyer, Land, Klein & Park, 2018; Kirk, Lee, Ang & Lee, 2015) meant to measure relations between perceptions, messages evaluations and other construct or aspects.
The design chosen for the tables was the following: the first row refers to the simple linear model, that is, without any variable that can mediate or moderate its effect and, the coefficient (linear or odds ratio) and its confidence interval at 95% are shown. The rest of the rows take into account each one of the variables that can mediate or moderate the effect. Therefore, the coefficient shown refers to the main independent variable but altered by the presence of the corresponding mediating variable.
To determine if a variable was moderator or mediator we considered the biostatistical criteria of the Penn State University on their biostatistics courses: if the coefficient, when taking into account a third variable, varies over 10% in relation to the coefficient associated to the model, without there being a third variable, this would be considered mediator or moderator, otherwise, no.
The implemented formula to compute the percentage variation was:

Therefore, all the mediating or moderating variables are highlighted in bold in every single table. Additionally, in the case of the coefficient being statistically significant, it will be indicated with an asterisk on top of the coefficient.

3. Results

3.1. Influence of emotions in the intention to share the news

The odds ratio associated to fear, provided by the simple logistic regression model, reached statistical significance, being 1.2892 with a confidence interval at 95% of (1.0311, 1.6309) (see Graphic 1). This indicates that a greater level of fear translates into a greater probability of sharing the news. Especially based on the odds ratio, an increase by one unit of said level makes the probability of sharing the news increase by almost 29%. Even though as seen on the graphic, there is a greater probability of sharing the news among the individuals with a greater level of this emotion. Although in the following category next to fear the situation is converse maybe due to a lack of fear.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic1
Graphic 1. Frequency of the participants that would share the piece of news based on the fear perceived.

The odds ratio associated to suspicion, provided by the simple logistic regression model, did not reach statistical significance, being 1.0932 with a confidence interval at 95% of (0.8525, 1.4127). This indicates that a greater level of suspicion won’t translate into a greater probability of sharing the news.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic2
Graphic 2. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the suspicion perceived.

The odds ratio associated to anger, provided by the simple logistic regression model, reached statistical significance, being of 1.35 with a confidence interval at 95% of (1.0755, 1.7217). This indicates that a greater level of anger translates into a greater probability of sharing the news. Especially based on the odds ratio, an increase by one unit of said level makes the probability of sharing the news increase by almost 35%. Even though as seen on the graphic, there is a greater probability of sharing the news among the individuals with a greater level of this emotion.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic3
Graphic 3. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the anger perceived.

The odds ratio associated to the level of confusion, provided by the simple logistic regression model, did not reach statistical significance, being 1.0565 with a confidence interval at 95% of (0.827, 1.3601). This indicates that a greater level of confusion won’t translate into a greater probability of sharing the news.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic4
Graphic 4. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the confusion perceived.

The odds ratio associated to the level of sadness, provided by the simple logistic regression model, did not reach statistical significance, being 1.1666 with a confidence interval at 95% of (0.9324, 1.47). This indicates that a greater level of sadness won’t translate into a greater probability of sharing the news. Even though as seen on the graphic, in levels 6 and 7 of sadness, the difference of sharing the news is more noticeable.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic5
Graphic 5. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the sadness perceived.

The odds ratio associated to the level of concern, provided by the simple logistic regression model, did not reach statistical significance, being 1.2001 with a confidence interval at 95% of (0.9467, 1.5362). This indicates that a greater level of concern won’t translate into a greater probability of sharing the news. Even though as seen on the graphic, in levels 6 and 7 of concern, the difference of sharing the news is more noticeable.

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic6
Graphic 6. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the concern perceived.

The odds ratio associated to the influence of bad emotions, provided by the simple logistic regression model, reached statistical significance, being 1.0872 with a confidence interval at 95% of (1.0137, 1.172). This indicates that an increase by one unit in the influence of negative emotions translates into a greater probability of sharing the news. Especially according to the graphic and the odds ratio, the probability of sharing the news increases by 8.7%

Source: author’s own creation.
graphic7
Graphic 7. Frequency of participants that would share the news based on the negative emotions perceived.

3.2 Moderating role of uses and gratifications sought

It can be considered as moderating variable for information seeking in the cases of “Anger”, “Suspicion” and “Concern”. In these situations occurs a variation greater than 10% in the odds ratio associated to the news being shared (see Table 6).

Table 6. Moderating role of the uses and gratifications on the influence of emotions perceived and the intention of sharing the news.

table6

Source: author’s own creation.

3.3. Moderating role of news internalization and externalization

News internalization can be considered as moderating variable because it produces a variation greater than 10% in the odds ratio associated with the news being shared in the cases of “Anger”, “Sadness” and “Concern” (see Table 7).

Table 7. Moderating role of internalization and externalization on the influence of emotions perceived and the intention of sharing the news
table7
Source: author’s own creation.

3.4. Moderating role of interest, knowledge and previous attitudes

Concern about climate change can be considered moderating variable because it produces a variation greater than 10% in the odds ratio associated with the news being shared (see Table 8).

Table 8. Moderating role of interest, knowledge and previous attitudes on the influence of emotions perceived and the intention of sharing the news.

table8_1

table8_2

Source: author’s own creation.

4. Discussion and conclusions

The data obtained allows us to answer the enunciated questions for the research and test the hypothesis proposed. Therefore, regarding RQ1 “What emotion is more relevant when sharing a piece of news about climate change on social media?” highlights that fear and anger are the emotions that have fostered a piece of news to be shared the most (see Graphic 1 and Graphic 3). Likewise, hypothesis H1 can also be verified “Negative emotions are correlated with the intention of sharing a piece of news on social media”. (See Graphic 7)
As for the research question RQ2: “What uses and gratifications sought on social media will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about climate change?” The data points out information seeking as the only use and gratification that moderates the role of the emotion (see Table 6). Self-image management and Social interaction stand on the sidelines of this influence.
Regarding RQ3 “What informational consumption habits on social networks will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about climate change?”, the results of this research point out that only news consumption (news internalization) moderates the emotional influence when sharing content about climate change on social media. On the contrary, the externalization habit does not influence on this matter (see Table 7).
The answer to question RQ4: “What previous attitudes towards climate change will moderate the influence of emotions when sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media?” is negative, in the sense that none of these attitudes moderates the influence of the emotion over the decision of sharing the news. In addition, the data does not allow testing hypothesis H2 “Previous knowledge about climate change will moderate the influence of emotions on the intention of sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media”. On the contrary, hypothesis H3 has been proven “The previous level of concern about climate change will moderate the influence of emotions on the intention of sharing a piece of news about this topic on social media” (see Table 8).
The findings presented here align with other studies that pointed out the importance of fear related to awakening public’s involvement in actions against climate change (Hartmann, Apaolaza, D’Souza, Barrutia, & Echebarria, 2014). This research demonstrates that fear is also a relevant factor when it comes to users giving more prominence to messages about the effects and consequences of climate change. This evidence can be especially useful when designing social media campaigns to raise environmental awareness on this matter.
On another note, this study also presents anger as a relevant factor when deciding whether sharing a piece of news about climate change or not. Even if it has been pointed out in other contexts, such as political information (Hassel & Weeks, 2016), this emotional aspect had not still been pointed out in the specific case of environmental communication, and in particular, about climate change.
As for the factors considered as moderators over this emotional impact, it has been uncovered the role played by the active search for information on this matter. Both use and gratification of information seeking and the specific habit of news consumption through social media soften the emotional burden of news. This fact is consistent with the role of concern about climate change. That is, the more concerned a user is for getting information and more information he/she receives, the less affected he/she will be by the emotional burden of news when sharing it among his/her friends. However, previous knowledge about climate change won’t moderate that emotional impact the same way. Therefore, it can be concluded that the emotional influence is only moderated if there is concern or the intention of getting informed, not if that information gets carried out and is effective in the specific context of climate change.

4.1. Limitations and further research

This study has only used one message as stimulus to measure the emotional response; hence the effects and the role played by different aspects of news and its treatment have not been compared.
It has been pointed out that different approaches and framings can lead to variations on the effects of massages about climate change (Bilandzic, Kalch, & Soentgen, 2017; Feldman & Hart, 2018) and that these differences on news treatment can cause dissimilar effects on the users’ attitudes and intentions (Hart & Feldman, 2016). Therefore, since users react differently to different framings (Lee, Chang, & Chen, 2017) it is necessary that further studies compare the participants’ responses to several stimuli that include different approaches.
These further studies should use different stimuli with substantial differences on these aspects to mediate the variations they cause on readers’ reactions.
On the other hand, the results presented can only be extrapolated to a specific segment of the Spanish population, such as undergraduate students. Future studies should compare the results obtained with other age groups. Likewise, since the reactions to emotions can be different on distinct cultural settings (Eriksson, Coultas, & de Barra, 2016) transcultural and transnational replications of this study are necessary, in order to understand better the effects of emotions perceived from secondary news dissemination.

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AUTHORS

Francisco Segado-Boj: Doctor in Journalism from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2008). Currently a professor at Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR), where he leads the Research Team “Comunicación y Sociedad Digital” [EN: Digital Communication and Society]. Accredited as the University Titular Professor, has twelve years of research recognized by CNEAI. His lines of research are focused on digital media and social networks, as well as scientific and academic communication. He has published dozens of articles about these topics on magazines like Telematics & Informatics, Comunicar, El Profesional de la Información, Journal of Scholarly Publishing o First Monday. Currently he is the leading researcher of the Project “Consumo de noticias en medios sociales. Análisis de factores en la selección y difusión de contenidos mediáticos”, [EN: “News consumption on social media. Analysis of factors on the selection and dissemination of media content”], reference CSO2017-86312-R financed by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)
francisco.segado@unir.net
H Index: 8
Orcid ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7750-3755
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=pY9m6isAAAAJ&hl=es&oi=ao

Jesús Díaz-Campo: He has a degree in Journalism and PhD in Communication from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He got a scholarship from Formación del Profesorado del Ministerio de Educación y Cultura and he did investigation residencies in the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of Tampere University (Finland) and in the offices of the European Journalism Training Association (Tilburg, Netherlands) and in the European Journalism Centre (Maastricht, Netherlands). Professor at the Enterprise and Communication Faculty of Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR), where he leads the Universitario en Comunicación e Identidad Corporativa Master and teaches several subjects since 2011. He has also taught at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (as an intern FPU) and in Universidad Pontificia Comillas. He is accredited by ANECA as University Titular Professor. Member of the Research Group Comunicación y Sociedad Digital (COYSODI) of Universidad Internacional de la Rioja. He is author of over forty articles published on several academic magazines (Telematics & Informatics, Transinformaçao, El Profesional de la Información, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, Palabra Clave, Cuadernos.Info, Observatorio (OBS) or Historia y Comunicación Social, among others). Additionally, he has participated in different research projects obtained in competitive regime and has six years of research recognized by CNEAI. His main lines of research are focused on Communications Ethics; Corporative Social Responsibility; Political Communication and Social Networks; Radio.
jesus.diaz@unir.net
H Index: 9
Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5014-8749
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=rNxx5WYAAAAJ&hl=es&oi=ao

Nuria Navarro-Sierra: Has a Degree and PhD with international major in Audiovisual Communication from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She was hired as a trainee in the Department of Comunicación y Publicidad I through the program Formación del Profesorado Universitario del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte and did a residency research at the University of Lincoln (The U.K.). She is an Associated Professor in the courses and double courses of Periodismo, Comunicación Audiovisual y Periodismo. She has previously taught at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Centro de Estudios Superiores Felipe II, in the courses and degrees of Audiovisual Communication. She is member of the Research Group Investigación Visual, associated to Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain). Among her publications there are lines of research regarding television and radio in Spain, new business models or new digital communication media narrative.
nuria.navarro.sierra@urjc.es
H Index: 3
Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1431-1534
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=qP7Y1_oAAAAJ&hl=es