Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 2021, 11(2), e202105 e-ISSN: 1986-3497 Online News Addiction: Future Anxiety, Fear of Missing Out on News, and Interpersonal Trust Contribute to Excessive Online News Consumption Reza Shabahang 1* 0000-0002-8717-9378 Mara S. Aruguete 2 0000-0003-0588-1516 Hyejin Shim 3 0000-0002-0912-6983 1 University of Tehran, Tehran, IRAN 2 Lincoln University, Missouri, USA 3 University of Missouri, Missouri, USA * Corresponding author:
[email protected] Citation: Shabahang, R., Aruguete, M. S., & Shim, H. (2021). Online News Addiction: Future Anxiety, Fear of Missing Out on News, and Interpersonal Trust Contribute to Excessive Online News Consumption. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 11(2), e202105. https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/10822 ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Received: 21 Oct 2020 Following online news and updates have become an ever-increasing part of life in the Accepted: 14 Jan 2021 information age. Surprisingly, however, there is no standardized measurement to examine excessive news consumption in the online context. This study was conducted in order to address online news addiction by developing and validating a questionnaire. Furthermore, this study investigated psychological determinants and consequences of online news addiction. A 9-item questionnaire was developed to assess participants’ maladaptive online news consumption. Exploratory factor analysis suggested a one-factor model including 9 items, accounting for 51.47 of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis showed support for this one-factor model. The results revealed that the online news addiction questionnaire had acceptable internal consistency reliability. Future anxiety, fear of missing out on news, and interpersonal trust were associated with online news addiction.