Incidental negative news exposure through Instagram : The effect on well-being. Resilience as a potential moderator.

Incidental negative news exposure shows tendencies to negatively influence a person’s well-being. Instagram is barely explored in that context. Resilience is known to act as a resource when facing challenging events. The aim of this study was to identify the effects of incidental negative news exposure through Instagram on well-being and to assess whether resilience acts as a moderator between incidental negative news exposure and well-being. Two conditions, experimental and control, have been assessed through a pre-and post-measurement. The experimental condition was exposed to incidental negative news. The MHC-SF form was used to assess participants’ level of well-being and the resilience subscale of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire to measure participants’ level of resilience. A paired t-test was applied to investigate for a decline in well-being. A moderation analysis was conducted with resilience as the moderator. A decline in well-being has been found for both conditions, with a slightly larger decrease in the experimental condition. The moderation analysis yielded a non-significant moderation effect of resilience and a non-significant effect of incidental negative news exposure on well-being. Resilience showed to influence well-being. Although there was no clear evidence found for incidental negative news exposure negatively influencing well-being, a decline in well-being was still observable, regardless of the type of content. The decline in well-being might have been due to other factors, such as social comparison. The effects of news exposure through Instagram on well-being and resilience as a moderator should be further investigated.