“It’s getting better all the time”: News avoidance and optimistic assessment as correlates of support for enacting extreme policies in war

Despite the important role of media coverage in conflict and war, limited research attention has empirically and systematically examined the association between news consumption and attitudes in conflict. This study, in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Israel–Hamas war, focuses on a specific pattern of news-consumption – avoidance of mainstream news. It examines how Jewish–Israeli avoidance of mainstream news during the war and optimistic assessments of the current situation in Israel are associated with support for Israel enacting extreme, militant policies in war. The authors’ analysis is based on a representative sample of Israeli-Jews (N = 901) obtained through public-opinion polling. As expected, mainstream news-avoidance and optimistic assessments of the current situation were positively associated with increased Jewish-Israeli support for militant policies. The association between news-avoidance and increased support for militant policies was partly mediated by optimistic assessments of the current situation of Israel. Together, news avoidance and optimistic assessments of the current situation explained significant variance in support for militant policies (R² = .31).