Understanding News Consumption and Interventions to Fight Misinformation to Protect Individual and Societal Well-Being

Although hundreds of millions of people consume news every day, consumer and marketing research has paid little attention to this realm of consumption and its relevance for consumer behavior, marketing management, public policy, and societal well-being. This proposal aims to identify news media as a pressing and meaningful area for research at the intersection of transformative consumer research (TCR), marketing, society, and public policy. Exploring the realm of news is particularly important for marketing scholars given that media companies are increasingly driven by marketing paradigms, such as Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing (Mende, Vallen, and Berry 2021). In turn, the emergence of increasingly marketing-driven news organizations potentially can lead to some concerning, unforeseen outcomes related to the widespread proliferation of inaccurate information, which can drive consumer (dis)trust and may have negative implications on the micro-, meso-, and macro levels (e.g., individual and societal well-being). This proposal is especially focused on studying (1) the effects of news consumption and (2) the role of interventions that can help fight misinformation.