THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF PESSIMISTIC NEWS BIAS IN A

GLOBAL PANDEMIC: A STUDY ON THE YOUNG POPULATION OF

BANGLADESH

Course: ENG105
Course Title: Advanced Composition
Section: 16
Submitted to Course Instructor: Tania Rahman (TRn)

Submitted by: Samin Soria Samad

ID: 2013668620
Date of Submission: 10th September 2021

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I cannot express enough gratitude to the Almighty for keeping me and my
family healthy and unharmed in this global pandemic. The coronavirus has affected millions
of people and even so, I was fortunate to not be one of them. In addition, I would mention my
family and my friends who have not only always been there for me but also have sustained
and abided by me. It is because of their motivation and support that I have been able to reach
as far as I have and God willing, I will reach farther.

To conclude, I must also show my appreciation to my mentor and course instructor for being
ever so graceful to have supported since the very beginning of this research paper. If it was
not for her suggestions, proposition as well as expert advice, I would not have been
successful in finishing this paper as well as I have and I can certainly say, she has made the
journey a lot more comfortable for me than I thought it to be.

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ABSTRACT
Since March 2020, the government’s strict laws imposed to maintain social distance and stay-at-
home orders have caused massive changes to the employment rate and education system in
Bangladesh, which has further caused concern, uncertainty, and stress among Bangladeshi. To
add to that, an increase in news and social media consumption has been observed as coping
strategies. The aim of this paper, titled ‘The Psychological Impact of Negative News Bias in A
Global Pandemic: A Study on The Young Generation of Bangladesh’ is to examine and
determine the psychological and cognitive well-being of individuals in the situation of the global
pandemic.
Our findings indicate the potentiality of COVID-19 related pessimistic news and social media
contents the psychosocial & cognitive behavior of the young people of our country. With respect
to the potential awareness-building platform, the news media and social outlets are the main
targets of my research to indicate their impact upon the deteriorating mental health of the
audience and to seek their views on the matter.

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 Contents

1) INTRODUCTION..........................................................................5

2) LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................6

3) RESEARCH QUESTIONS................................................................7

4) Hypothesis..................................................................................8

5) Research Methodology...............................................................9

6) DATA REPRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS....................................10

7) Summary of Research Findings..................................................19

8) Conclusion................................................................................20

9) Recommendation.....................................................................21

References.....................................................................................22

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 1) INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected every aspect of our lives including, but not
limited to the news outlets of the world and how it affects the mental health of individuals. After
the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, Bangladesh has gone in and out of severe countrywide
lockdowns several times. As the preparations were being taken to submit this research paper, the
country was under lockdown and people were forced inside their homes. Being confined in the
four walls of their house, updates of the deterioration of the pandemic that news channels and
social media portrays, can be very menacing for a person’s mental health. One of the primary
victims of this unprecedented time is the young people of our country. The shutdown of
institutions, the lack of socializing, preexistent psychological disorder, inability to seek shelter in
close friends and peer groups has caused them to fall prey to a pessimistic cloud of news
broadcast which makes it seems there is no way out of the never-ending cycle of COVID-19.

The focus of my research is subjected to how the negative i.e., accurate news on the
announcement of lockdowns, quarantine condition, number of daily affected population and
deaths, current situation of the pandemic, etc. have affected young peoples’ mental health, their
behavior as well as their overall conduct towards the global pandemic. At this stage of the
pandemic, where people might have even lost count of the waves that have hit, I intend to show
within my research the role that this pessimistic news bias has played while battling a global
pandemic. There is also the fact that the majority of the people are not maintaining the lockdown
and showcasing it on social media which might have had some grim effects on the thought
processes of the young people who have chosen to stay indoors.

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 2) LITERATURE REVIEW
Mark Deuze writes in his book Media Life, the modern world has become one in which the
media are ubiquitous, pervasive, and cannot be switched off, and this is also true of news (as
cited in Davey, 2020) as nowadays we can hardly avoid it and sometimes feel the necessity to
actively seek it out. The modern era has adapted to a menacing tone of news with an increased
amount of visual and audial which are shocking, often nerve-wracking, and incredibly worrisome
at the same time. Although television continues to be the most popular medium of news
consumption, in order to meet the excess demand of acquiring information, social media
platforms have risen up and according to (Morejon, 2012), often times seen to be covering news
even before news organizations have a chance to report it. This switch in media platforms was
single-handedly spearheaded by the millennial of the 21 st century (POLLARD, 2018). The
prominent upward trend in media consumption can be associated with the surging demand for
news by the youth population. The fact itself motivated researchers as well as I to investigate the
post-impact of this media consumption.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has been creating headlines since the beginning of its arrival.
It’s been more than a year since we got introduced to the pandemic but even in today’s
newspapers or any online media, we will find hundreds of articles, comments, and opinions on
the topic. According to the word of a renowned BBC Journalist “Perhaps journalists are drawn to
reporting bad news because sudden disaster is more compelling than slow” (Tom Stafford,
2014). According to Brown University undergraduate researcher Molly Cook, the negativity
displayed in the news and bite-sized media posts could be driven by reader demand. As her study
“Plotted the level of negativity in the tone of news coverage alongside daily case counts, and it
was found that for the most-read news sources, the level of negativity was pretty constantly high
from March to the end of July and didn’t fluctuate when cases substantially increased or
decreased.” (PROVIDENCE, 2021). With the application of enhanced AI and push technology,
news are now-a-days circulated swiftly among friends and family, as a negative outcome we now
have pessimistic news bias tampering through our well-being. (Davey, 2020) claimed that,
“Research we have conducted also shows that negative news can cause significant mood
changes, generating anxiety and depression that subsequently exacerbate the individuals own
personal worries.”
Authors Thomas Kronschläger and Eva Sommer have argued that even articles about trivial or
improbable threats can serve to fuel public fear about what apocalyptic dangers might be lurking.
(as cited in Davey, 2020)

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3) RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.  What are some of the psychological impacts that pessimistic news offers as individuals
learn to cope with the global pandemic?
2. Does knowing about the negative health statistics make us perform better or worse than
our usual ties of performances?      
3. How did demographics and pandemic situations, such as lockdown, quarantine
conditions, and death numbers, contribute to possible psychiatric disorders?
4. Did the youth population of Bangladesh undergo any peer pressure to violate the
confinement imposed by the government?
5. What is the general association of social media use with mental health in respect to the
adolescent of our country? 

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 4) Hypothesis
I expect to prove with my research that most people are overwhelmed by the daily news that is
broadcasted and displayed on television and social media platforms, which creates a significant
amount of anxiety, health-wise, for every individual. I also aim to comprehend the thought
process of those individuals who choose to ignore the restrictions imposed by the government of
Bangladesh over recent times to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its impact upon
them and their actions. For those who chose to be wise and remain indoors, I also seek to find an
answer that will reveal whether they felt any amount of peer pressure to break apart from the
confinement they were facing & whether it affects them to see people still choosing to violate
social distancing directives and thus, contributing to the inevitable spread of the virus. I also
envisioned finding out the potential solution towards diminishing the negative news bias which
exists surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic cloud in our country.

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 5) Research Methodology
Primary Research: In order to carry out my primary research, I have conducted an online
survey using “Google Forms” choosing a random sample of 35 individuals from my friends,
family, and peer group. The variables by which I’ve chosen the participants are age group,
gender, educational status and perhaps social standing. 

Secondary Research: For my secondary research, I have accumulated information and observed
several statistical and analytical data from academic papers and scholarly articles which support
my primary research as well as provide a suitable answer to my research questions. The general
internet, mainly the Google browser has been utilized to its maximum in order to conduct the
primary research and develop a general idea on the research topic.

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 6) Data Representation and Analysis
My data collection process was conducted via an online survey questionnaire. The aim of the
data collection procedure is to prove my hypothesis for the research paper. The survey was
conducted using Google Forms and the participants were chosen at random. General information
was taken at the beginning of the survey in order to categorize the data collected. The general
information contains gender, age group, and educational status of the participants. A total of 35
responses have been collected before concluding the survey, which comprises of 20 female
participants and 15 male participants. The class & age group are dominated by university
undergraduates belonging to the age group 18-22.
 
 The first question was asked in order to categorize different news information
pessimistically to different opinionated individuals amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The
participants were given 4 options to choose from. As it was a checkbox question,
participants could choose more than one option to contribute to their answer, because of
which a total of 65 responses were collected. The result is shown below:

As seen in the bar graphs, the majority of people chose the news of ‘Public suffering caused
by the pandemic’ to be the most negative news. It was chosen by 24 out of 35 participants.
The next most negative news chosen by the participants is the ‘Deteriorating life-death
statistic’, which is voted by 17 of 35 participants. ‘Information about new variants of the
COVID-19 virus’ & ‘Updates on the slow vaccination rate’ has a fair share of participant
response but comparatively less to the other two options. One noticeable feature from the
graph shows that not all participants find each stated news information negative, except for 1
which can be considered the anomaly in this section of the responses. 
 

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  In the second question, participants were asked what they thought about the news
channels constantly flooding the general public with COVID-19 related news. With 3
options to choose from, the results are illustrated as shown below:

 
From the pie chart statistics, we can observe that 15 out of 35 participants chose “No opinion”,
followed by 13 participants who voted for “Their approach to the general public is causing a
nuisance”. This contributes to 37.1% of total responses. On the other hand, 7 participants voted
for the option - “They are doing a praise-worthy job” which is 20% of total responses. Keeping
the majority of votes aside, the option which expresses the participants’ negative opinion about
the news channels dominates over the participants’ appraisal on the news channels by 17.1%.

 The third & fourth questions were framed to address the input of the explanatory variable
(Pessimistic news) on our dependent variable (Youth population). The result came as
shown below:

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The first 3D modelled bar graph shows that about 57% participants don’t watch the news. Next,
about 34% participants responded to spending only 15 minutes on new channel updates.
Following afterwards, 5.7% and 2.9% of total responses tabulated highlight that participants
spend half an hour and more than an hour on viewing updates from the local news channels
respectively.
The second 3D modelled bar graph significantly shows that almost 49% of participants almost
never visit the WHO website. The statistic next highlights that 40% participants sometimes learn
about COVID-19 updates. A very small percentage of participants - 8.6% and 2.9% visit the

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WHO website and local health authority platforms to learn about the updates on COVID-19 once
every week and once every month respectively.
The first bar graph suggests that about 91% participants cumulatively spend little to no time on
extracting news updates, and the second bar graph suggests that almost 89% participants search
for COVID-19 updates via online resources, cumulatively. Perhaps this is the result of of the
heavy toll that impacted most individuals’ mental health due to the pandemic. The consumption
of COVID-19 pandemic related news may induce acute anxiety within them in certain forms and
degrees. Hence, most choose to ignore local news channel updates and online website updates.

 The fifth question seeks information from participants, whether receiving news updates
benefits them in any way. This question was framed to establish a correlation with the 3 rd

& 4 questions & the analysis is very important as it sheds light on COVID-19 related
th

news presented in the available platforms. The results are as shown below on a pie chart:

While about 57% participants agree that the updates raise awareness, 25.7 of total responses
suggest that the news updates cause anxiety while about 17% participants express no opinion.
Here, a quarter of the participants express the induced anxiety they experience from the news
updates.
 

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  From the 6 question, participants were viewed a specific title of a news article to tabulate
th

their response towards a COVID-19 related ominous news. The article title is given
below:

The resultant responses are depicted in a bar graph:

15 out of 38 responses suggest that most participants react by going quiet after coming across
pandemic-related news. 11 out of 38 responses contribute to “none of the above”. Very few
participants voted for the 3 other options - 7 for “ask questions in belief”, 3 for “deny that this is
happening” and 2 for “start crying or become angry”. A significant response to the “none of the
above” option suggests that every individual has a different coping mechanism.

 In the 7 question participants were given a statement to which they had to either agree or
th

disagree. Both the question & the finding of the answer are depicted below:

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Almost 23% participants opted for “3” which suggests that they are neutral to this statement. On
the other hand, 31.4% and 22.9% of total responses tally for “4” and “5” respectively while 5.7%
and 17.1% of total responses tally for “1” and “2”. This means that more than half of the
participants strongly agree to the statement while a total of almost 23% only disagree. This is,
undoubtedly a significant ratio as it shows that the young people in Bangladesh think that the
news channels and media outlets has major contribution behind circulating pessimistic news and
thus affecting their mental well-being. 
 
 In the 8 question, the contributors of the survey were asked to choose a few proposed
th

suggestions which can ensure that we’re getting the full story about the pandemic. These
recommendations hold tremendous value to the research paper as it opens an optimistic
offering to the existing issue from the youth of our generation.
The results of their answers are given below:

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Out of 77 responses, 30 responses recommend following authentic news, 23 suggest focusing
more on positive stories, 21 responses advice refraining from making and believing any baseless
fact from news, 2 responses advocate avoiding news channels and medias entirely and 1
response mentions referring from making and believing any baseless news fact.

 The 9 & 10 questions were framed keeping in mind the hypothetical question -what
th th

psychological impact does peer pressure and media consumption have over our minds.

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A surge in responses as the curve progresses 3 quarters and the decreasing motion till the very
low point at the end suggest that the frequency of online posts were quite high during the
pandemic. Fair share of other responses suggest that participants viewed online posts sometimes
and all the time.  
About 31% participants opted for “3” which suggests that their actions were neutral. On the other
hand, 31.4% and 8.6% of total responses tally for “4” and “5” respectively while 8.6% and 20%
of total responses tally for “1” and “2”. This means that 40% of the participants were strongly
impacted while only about 28.6% were lowly impacted. Therefore, the majority are affected by
what they view online.

 Questions 11 & 12 were asked to gather information about the general participants’
thoughts on news channels and social platforms’ actions during a global pandemic.

Firstly, participants were asked a general question whether they believe that authentic facts
based on science and the situation's reality can help to minimize fears or not. The collected
result is highlighted below:

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Afterwards, they had been asked whether they think newspapers, news channels, & social media
platforms should practice understandable ways to propagate news with people with intellectual,
cognitive, and psychosocial disabilities. The answers provided are as follows:

In response to the first question, about 54% participants voted “Yes”, 40% participants voted
“Maybe” and almost 6% participants voted “No”. For the next question, 94.3% of the
participants voted “Yes” while only a mere 5.7% of the participants voted “No”. These statistics
state that the youth population believe that the media sector can do better by being more
authentic and understanding in terms of broadcasting news.

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 7) Summary of Research Findings
All the above collected data from the questionnaire strongly support the main claim of the
hypothesis of this research paper that the news broadcasted by TV channels and on social
media platforms has significantly impacted the mental health of the youth population. The
spontaneous news of public suffering and the rise in mortality rate has affected the audience
more in general. While many participants share no opinion on the matter, more than a third of
the population find news broadcasting methods rather disturbing. As a result, most of the youth
population resort to spending as little as 15 minutes or no time at all to gather updates from
news channels. Not only that but also about 9/10th of the population seldom feels the need to
stay updated regarding the pandemic via online resources, which we can consider to be the
next best alternative to news channels. This is because a quarter of the population feel that
these news updates make them anxious, while others spend minimal time on receiving these
updates to raise self-awareness. Even the majority’s reaction to hearing of any negative news,
COVID-19 related, is rather a passive one and most dominantly agree that the pandemic has
strongly affected their mental health negatively. The youth population believes that the news
broadcasting channels can do much better by spreading authentic news only and execute more
considerate and compassionate methods while doing their job.

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8) Conclusion
As the modern-day news has become inevitably difficult to avoid, we all are under the
influence of a plethora of headlines, notifications, news podcasts, and commentary on the
welfare & problems around us. Amidst the chaos spread by pessimistic news broadcasts, it
might not be solemnly upon us what we choose to consume as media platforms have
advanced in broadcasting news worldwide over the years. In a time when we all are
surviving in a pandemic-afflicted world; whilst coping with the climate crisis, gulf situation,
various geopolitical tensions in between, the national news media has obviously made us
very aware. However, it is also the latent reason why people are unable to be hopeful of the
new normal in their lives.  

In the late Middle Ages, Bocaccio wrote his famous Decameron, which narrates that 10
young people fled from the plague which devastated Florence and took refuge, into
confinement, in a beautiful country villa. To pass their days, they combined routine tasks
with storytelling sessions for not only entertainment and recreational purposes, but also to
draw lessons from each story. Just like those refugees, in our days of confinement, we must
learn to entertain ourselves in a way that will make us genuinely happy (as cited in José
Antonio Muñiz-Velázquez, 2020). In order for that to happen, the news media sector
should serve its purpose as a true ally towards the youth population.

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 9) Recommendation
I acknowledge that the exhibited study has its own limitations. First and foremost, it would have
been great if the presented conclusion was reached in accordance with a greater number of
respondents as only a set of 35 participants cannot represent the general young population of
Bangladesh or express all of the youth population’s views and opinions in general. The
procedure of group sampling with proper visual & audial resources would have been the
prospective method to collect the sample for this study as it is used in one of the backgrounds on
which this research paper is inspired to be established (Wendy M. Johnston, 1997). In addition,
in accordance with (Natascha de Hoog, 2021), personal relevance of the news and personality
characteristics, neuroticism and extraversion, could be assessed to have had a grim effect in
concluding the result. Therefore, it's absolutely necessary that the influencing variables are kept
in control.

A future line of research, beyond the situation of confinement, should be to further explore
causality in the relationship between pessimistic news bias and its aftereffect (José Antonio
Muñiz-Velázquez, 2020). Finally, it is worth mentioning that among the participants who
completed the survey questionnaire the majority left an encouraging remark on the topic. It was
proven that the issue of pessimistic news bias affecting the mental health of our youth population
is very much existent and in dire need of being addressed. The young representatives offered
precise solutions to this problem which require greater attention, without being afflicted with any
harm while participating in this questionnaire. I strongly believe that the results extracted from
the participants’ responses have the potential of bringing out a greater good and benefit everyone
in general.

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References
1) Davey, G. C. (2020, September 2021). The Psychological Impact of Negative News:
Negative News can Significantly Affect our Mental Health. Retrieved from Psychology
Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-
psychological-impact-negative-news
2) José Antonio Muñiz-Velázquez, D. G.-B. (2020). Exploratory Study of the Relationship
Between Happiness and the Rise of Media Consumption During COVID-19 Confinement.
Front Psychol. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8116533/#ref12
3) Morejon, R. ( 2012, June 28). How Social Media is Replacing Traditional Journalism as
a News Source [Infographic]. Retrieved from Social Media Today:
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-social-media-replacing-traditional-
journalism-news-source-infographic
4) Natascha de Hoog, P. V. (2021). Is the news making us unhappy? The influence of daily
news exposure on emotional states. London: British journal of psychology. Retrieved
from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30900253/
5) POLLARD, A. (2018, DECEMBER 12). Social media has officially replaced
newspapers. Retrieved from The Week Logo:
https://theweek.com/speedreads/812013/social-media-officially-replaced-newspapers
6) PROVIDENCE, R. [. (2021, January 22). Conversations on COVID: Is all pandemic
news really bad news? Retrieved from https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-01-22/cook
7) Tom Stafford. (2014, July 29). Psychology: Why bad news dominates the headlines. Why
are newspapers and TV broadcasts filled with disaster, corruption and incompetence? It
may be because we’re drawn to depressing stories without realising, says psychologist
Tom Stafford. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140728-why-is-all-
the-news-bad
8) Wendy M. Johnston, G. C. (1997). The psychological impact of negative TV news
bulletins: The catastrophizing of personal worries. Wiley (Blackwell Publishing).
Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14149927_The_psychological_impact_of_nega
tive_TV_news_bulletins_The_catastrophizing_of_personal_worries

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