Procura de informação sobre acontecimentos negativos nas redes sociais

: correlatos e adaptação de uma medida

Abstract

Doomscrolling is a behaviour consisting of seeking information about negativeevents (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine) on social media. Currently, the literature on this behaviour is scarce and there are no studies on the Portuguese population. Thus, this study aimed to describe doomscrolling in a sample of Portuguese adults, as well as to adapt the Doomscrolling Scale - Short Version to Portuguese. A total of 316 participants, whose ages ranged between 18 and 71 years, participated in this study. This was a quantitative, cross-sectional, and non-experimental study. The results indicated that doomscrolling was more frequent in relation to the war in Ukraine compared to theCOVID-19 pandemic. It was found that doomscrolling is not related to age, use ofdifferent social networks, and well-being. Most correlations between doomscrolling andperceptions about the present time were not statistically significant. It was also found that doomscrolling is negatively related to education, only in the context of the COVID-19pandemic. On the other hand, doomscrolling was found to be positively related to stress overload and somatization. With regard to coping strategies, doomscrolling was found tobe positively related to self-blaming, only in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to behavioural desinvestment, in both contexts. Finally, good levels of reliability and validity were found for the Portuguese version of the Doomscrolling Scale - Short Version. In conclusion, this study contributed to increasing the knowledge about doomscrolling andits harmful impact on mental and physical health, given that the literature on this topic is rather scarce, which will allow for improving the intervention in this area. In addition, this study included the Portuguese validation of a useful scale for assessing doomscrolling, which may be used in future research.

Date of Award	30 Nov 2022
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Bárbara Nazaré (Supervisor)