Boosting or Limiting? Examining How FoMO Influences Personal News Curation Through News Fatigue in Social Media

Abstract While the theoretical framework of curated flows provides valuable insights into the dynamics of the social media environment, it overlooks the interactions between curators and the mechanisms pertaining to these interactions. This study argues that each curator can interact with one another, resulting in an interplay between different flows and shaping an individual’s information networks. Specifically focusing on personal news curation, this research argues that it can influence curated flows by signaling algorithms of user preferences. Furthermore, the affective mechanism of news curation has received limited attention. Drawing on the Stress-Strain-Outcome model, this study investigates how Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) manifests divergent effects on news-boosting and news-limiting curation via social media news fatigue. The findings, derived from a large-scale survey in a work-from-home context (N = 1198), reveal a noteworthy association: individuals experiencing FoMO are susceptible to news fatigue, leading them to prioritize being protected (news-limiting curation) than informed (news-boosting curation). This might contribute to a narrower news repertoire and influence the cultivation of informed citizens.

preferences (Lee et al. 2019;Lu 2020).Unlike customization and selective exposure, personal curation cannot entirely determine its content on social media as the presence of algorithms and other curators also influence the social media feed.Rather, personal curation serves to convey signals to other curators, thus engaging in a collaborative effort to shape their news feed.Among various curators, the emerging evidence suggests that personal curation stands out as significantly more influential than the others.Emerging research employing computational analysis has revealed that individual choices, rather than algorithms, play a substantial role in limiting exposure to cross-cutting information on platforms (Bakshy, Messing, and Adamic 2015;González-Bailón et al. 2023;Robertson et al. 2023).Although more research is essential, these studies at least underscore personal curation plays a pivotal role, if not a determinant role, in shaping an individual's media exposure.
Emerging research has identified some antecedents of personal news curation, such as higher news avoidance and news interest (Lee et al. 2019;Merten 2021).However, the affective mechanism of personal news curation, particularly the influence of fear of missing out (FoMO) and news fatigue, remains largely unknown.Therefore, this study aims to contribute to both news curation and FoMO research by investigating how individuals cope with the overwhelming information on social media.
People possess an intrinsic need to know but also a fear of fatigue after knowing too much (Maslow 1963).The inability to keep up with the latest news or respond to instant messages may lead to a deficiency in basic needs and trigger stressful FoMO.Meanwhile, the excessive consumption of news and information also results in the affective state of tiredness-news fatigue, which increases cognitive burden and reduces further news engagement (Cao and Sun 2018).Hence, individuals are faced with a challenging dilemma: how to consume certain news to remain informed without being fatigued.This dilemma is particularly pronounced in social media, where FoMO and news fatigue are perpetuated by the permanently connected affordance of these platforms ( Vorderer, Krömer, and Schneider 2016;Wu-Ouyang 2023).
To address this dilemma, this manuscript is grounded in the stress-strain-outcome (SSO) model (Koeske and Koeske 1993) to explain and understand the underlying mechanism of FoMO on news curation.By understanding how FoMO serves as a social media stressor, this study demonstrates its role in exacerbating news fatigue (strain), thereby influencing news curation strategies (outcome).This manuscript argues that people adopt two types of news curation strategies, namely news-boosting and news-limiting curation, to strike a balance between insufficient vs. excessive news consumption.Each curation is afforded by the social media platform and serves as a coping strategy to mitigate the stress caused by the abundance of information on social media.The data from a large-scale survey in a work-from-home (WFH) context in China (N = 1198) provides evidence to the proposed SSO model and suggests that individuals who experience FoMO are susceptible to news fatigue, leading them to prioritize being protected than informed.This translates to a greater inclination towards news-limiting curation and a reduced engagement with news-boosting curation strategies.In the long run, this might link to a narrower news repertoire and influence the cultivation of informed citizens.

Conceptualization and Typology of Personal News Curation: News-Boosting and News-Limiting Strategies
Instead of being passive recipients of information, people actively influence, reshape, and create information on social media."Personal news curation" is coined here to capture the emerging phenomenon in which users manipulate and shape what shows up in their news feeds by interactively influence the algorithmic personalization processes (Davis 2017;Lee et al. 2019;Lor, Oh, and Choi 2022;Lu 2020).Unlike other curation processes that passively and solely rely on algorithmic, strategic, or journalistic curation (Thorson and Wells 2016), personal news curation involves individuals interactively organizing their news feed by adding or following certain accounts and deleting or hiding specific types of posts.By signaling preferences to the algorithm, personal news curation can influence other types of curations, leading to an interplay among various types of curated flows.Notably, unlike customization in social media, personal curation not only involves personal choice, but also structural influence coming from strategic, social, algorithmic, and journalistic curators that influence their curation results, thus different from the "self-selective" paradigm.In specific, signaling algorithms to hide disliked news does not guarantee the absence of similar posts but decreases the likelihood of seeing similar posts, as strategic media logic or incidental exposure to incongruent news may occur.Therefore, personal curation may result in certain automated serendipity (Fletcher and Nielsen 2018) and have the potential to impact news engagement and attitude tolerance by introducing counter-attitudinal incidental exposure (Chen, Kim, and Chan 2022).
Furthermore, personal news curation distinguishes itself by prioritizing content organization based on considerations of quality and skillful execution rather than mere attitudinal consonance (Lee et al. 2019).Merten (2021) empirically examined that people's social media skills are positively linked with news curation strategies.According to Festinger (1964), selective exposure occurs when an individual's position results from a conscious choice and personal commitment.Yet, individuals may not consistently reinforce their existing stances when curation but might proactively satisfy their self-improvement motivation, especially when the credibility of the provided information is poor (Hart et al. 2009;Knobloch-Westerwick 2015).That is to say, people may intentionally reach diverse information to follow the current trend, reflect themselves, or to prepare for the debate, such as following or sharing certain neutral or even disagreeing information.Such personal news curation, in turn, may have the potential to counteract algorithmic curation or partisan selective exposure (Merten 2021).
Previous studies often treat personal news curation as a unidimensional construct; this manuscript, however, argues that to attain a more detailed understanding, it should be further divided into its boosting and limiting aspects.The two dimensions of news-boosting and news-limiting curation were initially put forward by Merten (2021) under the curated flow framework.While her study did not provide detailed conceptualization, the results indicated that news-boosting curation is connected to a wider news repertoire compared to news-limiting curation, highlighting the differential effects of these two types of curations.Similarly, Lor, Oh, and Choi (2022) broke news personalization into two dimensions, namely news including and news excluding, with the former referring to proactively tailoring news by customizing and saving, and the latter referring to quantity management strategies, such as ignoring and filtering.Accordingly, this study conceptualizes news-boosting curation as the curatorial behavior of welcoming more information to one's news feed, such as following, liking, and friending, while news-limiting curation involves the curatorial behavior of removing certain news from one's news feed, such as blocking, deleting, and unfriending.As news-boosting and news-limiting curation are based on different technological affordances and may have different affective mechanisms, they are not merely two sides of the same coin, but independent dimensions that can coexist, influence, and are affected by individual psychology, resulting in varied outcomes.
Studying these two types of news curation strategies is crucial because adopting a suitable coping approach might influence the cultivation of an informed citizen (Lor, Oh, and Choi 2022).News-boosting curation might increase civic discussion and engagement by incorporating diverse news into their news feed while news-limiting curation is linked with less news consumption and a narrower news repertoire (Merten 2021), which may lead to less cognitive elaboration, more misinformation belief (Tandoc and Kim 2022), and less civic engagement (Matthes et al. 2019).Admittedly, people can also benefit from news-limiting curation by conserving cognitive resources and engaging in meaningful participation (Ohme et al. 2023;Toff and Nielsen 2022;Woodstock 2014), and harm by news-boosting curation wherein exposure to more like-minded content may adversely impact cognitive reflection and polarization (Stroud 2011).Given these important consequences, understanding the factors influencing individuals' choices in adopting different curation strategies becomes imperative.
The overwhelming information on social media is believed to facilitate a range of psychological responses, such as FoMO and news fatigue.To relieve this cognitive burden, individuals may employ various personal news curation practices to tailor this abundance of information in a manageable size.Therefore, examining these affective antecedents of personal news curation is of great importance.Accumulating research has mapped out some antecedents of personal news curation, such as news interest, user control, and political predispositions in shaping one's propensity to curate a news feed (Lee et al. 2019;Lu 2020;Merten 2021).However, the role of affective antecedents, such as FoMO and social media news fatigue in news curation is not well understood, though speculated by Lee et al. (2019), showing that users may engage in more following behavior rather than avoiding behavior, possibly due to the apprehension of missing out on important news.Therefore, this study seeks to address this gap by introducing a line of research on FoMO to the study of news curation.

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO)
Self-determination theory posits that people have three basic psychological needs: competence (the ability to effectively perform in the world), autonomy (the ability to take initiative), and relatedness (social connectedness, Przybylski et al. 2013).Fear of Missing Out (popularly referred to FoMO) is a state of limbo that arises from deficiencies in these basic psychological needs, indicating "people might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent" (Przybylski et al. 2013(Przybylski et al. , 1841)).FoMO is often considered an antecedent of negative mentality and behaviors, such as reduced need satisfaction, mood, and life satisfaction (Przybylski et al. 2013), negative well-being (Fioravanti et al. 2021), and problematic smartphone use (Elhai et al. 2016;Wu-Ouyang 2022).
Although the line of research on FoMO has not been previously introduced to personal news curation, a few studies have implied a relationship between certain subdimensions of FoMO (i.e., relatedness, competence, autonomy) and personal news curation.For example, studies have found that motivations for autonomy (Lu 2020) and fear of missing challenging viewpoints (Thurman et al. 2019) are positively related to news curation.These studies imply that individuals who are low in basic needs are more likely to tailor their news feed to achieve higher connectedness, competence, and autonomy.However, when further examining the boost-limit strategy in personal news curation, it is uncertain which related curation strategy individuals with FoMO would adopt.Since FoMO may impact cognitive function in a manner similar to other anxious or stressful conditions by activating the fight or flight response (Fink 2016), people may either boost or limit their news consumption to cope with the stress.This is especially the case in the current media environment characterized by information overload.With an abundance of information readily available, individuals may feel overwhelmed and struggle to remain informed without experiencing news fatigue.Therefore, it is necessary to understand how people use different news curation strategies to manage their stress and stay informed.
In particular, on one hand, researchers have explained that individuals actively limit their news consumption due to the negative impact of excessive news on their mood and emotional energy demands (Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020;Toff and Nielsen 2022).As emotions play a crucial role in driving reduced news consumptions (Villi et al. 2022), it is expected that FoMO, as a negative mental state, may lead to more news-limiting curation and less news-boosting curation.Moreover, studies have found that FoMO can lead to a decrease in self-regulation and facilitate undesirable behaviors, such as addiction and sharing fake news (Fioravanti et al. 2021).It is therefore possible that FoMO individuals may be more likely to have negative mental states and reduced self-regulation, which could make it difficult for them to add more challenging news to their news feeds.As a result, this could lead to a decrease in news-boosting behaviors but an increase in news-limiting curation.
On the other hand, users' motivation to seek control and develop social bonds may also enable them to boost more news.A line of studies has supported the positive relationship between negative emotion and information-seeking behavior (Albertson and Gadarian 2015;Wu-Ouyang and Hu 2022), suggesting that individuals may intentionally seek out news to fulfill their need for information.Joris et al. (2021) also found that individuals' concerns about missing challenging viewpoints were positively associated with their preference for content-based news consumption, further suggesting a potential positive relationship between FoMO and news-boosting curation.
The existing literature has yet to reach a consensus on the effects of FoMO on personal news curation.This study proposes that this lack of consensus may be attributed to a lack of consideration of the underlying mechanism through news fatigue, which is induced by a high volume of news consumption and grounded in Stress-Strain-Outcome (SSO) framework.As FoMO is linked with heightened cognitive fatigue in using social media, it acts as a risk factor contributing to news fatigue, which may prompt individuals to adopt personal news curation strategies to cope with their stress and manage their information repertoire.The subsequent sections elaborate on the key elements of SSO and how they act dynamically in explaining two types of personal news curation.

A Stress-Strain-Outcome Framework of Personal News Curation
The model proposed by this study is grounded in Stress-Strain-Outcome (SSO) framework, which provides an important explanation of how social media stressors affect its pertinent news outcomes (Koeske and Koeske 1993).In the SSO model, Stress usually refers to environmental stimuli that are cognitively distressing; Strain is defined as an emotional or physiological stressful state in response to a situational stimulus; Outcome is the persistent psychological or behavioral consequence of the stress and strain factors.SSO model has been used in several social media research to understand how social media stressors affect social media fatigue (Zheng and Ling 2021), and performance outcomes, such as social media discontinuance (Fu et al. 2020) and decreased productivity (Lee, Lee, and Suh 2016).As social media platforms result in extensive stress and strain that will contribute to diverse news outcomes, SSO is an appropriate framework for this current study to examine the psychological mechanism of personal news curation.In this study: (1) stress refers to FOMO, which is cognitively distressing on social media; (2) strain refers to social media news fatigue, which is an emotional state of tiredness in response to FOMO, (3) outcome is different types of news curation, namely, news-boosting and news-limiting curation.

Social Media News Fatigue
Social media fatigue refers to a self-evaluated feeling of tiredness that results from extensive usage of social networking sites (Lee, Son, and Kim 2016).Social media news fatigue refers to the subjective feeling of exhaustion induced by consuming a large volume of news on social media platforms.Performed as the psychological strain in the SSO model, social media news fatigue is crucial to this study because it may be caused by the stressful FoMO and can influence individuals' news curation.
The extant research generally suggests a positive relationship between FoMO and social media news fatigue (see the review from Tandon et al. 2021).For example, a recent study by Zhou and Tian (2023) identified FoMO as an important stressor contributing to WeChat fatigue.Since FoMO arises from deficiencies in psychological needs, it acts as a risk factor that contributes to excessive information consumption (Elhai et al. 2016;Wu-Ouyang 2022).Such excessive news engagement can easily induce social media news fatigue (Karapanos, Teixeira, and Gouveia 2016;Shen, Zhang, and Xin 2022;Tugtekin et al. 2020).As can be seen from SSO model, FOMO constitutes a stressor related to social media news use, which can intensify the feeling of news fatigue.This study therefore formulates H1 as follows: H1: Fear of missing out is positively associated with social media news fatigue.

Boosting or Limiting? Examining the Effects of Fatigue on News Curation
To cope with news fatigue, individuals may adopt personal curation tactics to reduce cognitive load and operate efficiently.Several studies have supported that when social media users experience affective strain or exhaustion, they may adopt news filtering strategies to limit their news consumption (Liang and Fu 2017;Lor, Oh, and Choi 2022), discontinue (Liu et al. 2021;Ye et al. 2022) and avoid further news consumption (Song, Jung, and Kim 2017;Thurman et al. 2019) to relieve stress, which implies people's news-limiting curation (Merten 2021).Liang and Fu (2017) unveiled that Twitter users often unfollow accounts that provide redundant information due to information overload, indicating people's news-limiting practices.Lor, Oh, and Choi (2022) found that people suffering from news overload are more likely to adopt exclusionary news-tailoring strategies, namely, ignoring and filtering.In a recent study applying SSO, Ye et al. (2022) reported the significant effects of FoMO and social media fatigue on the discontinuous use intention of TikTok short videos, indicating that higher levels of fatigue may lead to less news-boosting curation.Based on this line of research and SSO framework, more news-limiting curation may be employed to cope with the affective strain when social media users are higher in fatigue.
On the other hand, some studies also indicated that people may proactively boost their news consumption to reduce uncertainty, be informed by knowledge, and obtain a sense of belonging when overloaded (Auxier and Vitak 2019;Park 2019).Park (2019) identified a significant relationship between social media news overload and people's preference for reading news from friends, indicating that they may engage in social filtering through news-boosting curation by "friending" and "following" people they know and like.Since friend connections tend to be homogeneous (Bakshy, Messing, and Adamic 2015), they may provide a sense of belonging and relatedness, which can alleviate news fatigue.Auxier and Vitak (2019) discovered that, rather than seeking out diverse content, people intentionally include more like-minded content in their news feeds as a coping mechanism.Such customization can reinforce opinion, thereby reducing news fatigue.Accordingly, based on this line of speculation, when social media users are stressed about the abundance of news, they may engage in news-boosting curation by liking and following to reduce uncertainty and obtain social connectedness.Therefore, we have two research hypotheses: H2: Social media news fatigue is positively associated with news-limiting curation (H2a) and news-boosting curation (H2b).
Taking H1 and H2 altogether within the SSO framework, this study posits that FoMO, as an affective stressor, positively leads to further affective strain (social media news fatigue).As a result, individuals may engage in both news-limiting and news-boosting behaviors to cope with the stress.Due to the potential direct relationships of stressors (FoMO) on outcomes (news curation strategies), the study presents a third research hypothesis: H3: The relationship between FoMO and two types of personal news curation strategies is respectively mediated through social media news fatigue.

The Research Context: Work-From-Home Context
The evolving nature of work has garnered significant attention in recent years, particularly in light of the National Science Foundation's (2017) "Ten Big Ideas" initiative exploring the interplay between humans, society, and technology in shaping the future of work.Work-from-home (WFH) has emerged as a key modality that is likely to be influenced by technological advances, societal norms, and human behavior.Notably, a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (Parker, Horowitz, and Minkin 2022) found that over half of Americans continued to WFH even after the lifting of pandemic-related lockdown restrictions.Against this backdrop, this study is situated within the context of WFH, which holds significant promise for the future of work.
However, concerns have been raised about the negative impact of WFH on news consumption.People who WFH tend to receive more online news and information (Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė, and Goštautaitė 2019) and are more susceptible to information overload and news fatigue.This, in turn, may affect their work efficiency and mental well-being and result in negative news outcomes (Fridchay and Reizer 2022;Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė, and Goštautaitė 2019).There is a need to investigate the aforementioned framework in the context of WFH and explore the solutions to mitigate these social media stressors.The study took place in mainland China, a region largely overlooked in previous curation research.Thus, examining curation strategies in different contexts can enrich existing news curation literature.

Methodology
Purposive online sampling was employed to reach out to people in Xi'an, China from late 2021 to early 2022 during its lockdown.The author advertised a recruiting announcement through her social network to identify targeted participants with an incentive of 3-6 RMB.All research procedures received approval from the Behavioral Research Ethics Committee at the local university.Since in a city of 13 million residents, where most people are restricted at home, lockdown context provides a natural field for exploring the study's research questions within WFH context.From participants who completed the questionnaire (N = 2242), 1198 valid responses were collected excluding those with an IP address outside the local city (n = 787), not WFH (indicated no work, work on-site, or retired, n = 233), and did not pass the attention check (n = 24).I further validated people's WFH status (1 = seldom to 5 = always) by checking their occupation status.Participants indicated their occupations ranging from student to businessman.The descriptive data is presented in Table 1.

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO)
FoMO was measured based on Przybylski et al. (2013).Individuals were required to report their choices on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree) on ten statements, including "When I miss out on a planned get-together, it bothers me." and "I fear others have more rewarding experiences than me." (Cronbach's α = .94,M = 3.38, SD = .92).

Social Media News Fatigue
Social media news fatigue refers to the self-reported feeling of being tired of social media news consumption, which can be measured by three statements revised by Song, Jung, and Kim (2017): "I'm tired of receiving and processing news on social media," "I feel exhausted due to too much news on social media," and "I am tired of reading and watching news with negative emotions."Cronbach's alpha was .87(M = 3.38, SD = 1.07).

Personal News Curation (News-Boosting and News-Limiting)
Personal news curation was split into news-boosting and news-limiting curation strategies based on the revised consumptive news feed curation scale (Lee et al. 2019).News-boosting curation was measured by three items including "Added, followed, or become friends with a user or organization", "Liked, shared or commented on certain types of content", "Changed your settings or advertising preferences to see more content from a user or organization".News-limiting curation was measured by indicating their level of agreement on the following two statements: Deleted or blocked another user or organization; Changed settings so as to see less news from a user or organization.Unlike previous operationalization that conducted binary category of each curation strategy (e.g., Lee et al. 2019;Lu 2020;Merten 2021), this study treats each curation as a continuous variable and provides five options for participants from 1 (never) to 5 (always).The news-boosting (Cronbach's α = .82,M = 3.78, SD = 0.89) and news-limiting curation (Cronbach's α = .79,M = 3.52, SD = 0.97) were averaged and indicated good reliability.

Demographics and Controls
Several control variables were developed including age, gender, income, political affiliation, health condition, social media usage for news, mobile phone usage, Note. the mean of 4.22 for income means when the majority of income is made between 100,000 and 150,000 Chinese yuan per year.
working-from-home status, and pandemic-related fear.Of the participants, 48% were men and 52% were women.The age range of the participants was 19 to 72 (M = 30.68,SD = 7.22).The majority of them earned between 100,000 and 150,000 Chinese yuan per year (M = 4.22, SD = 1.56).Dummy coding was used to determine each person's political membership, with 34% of respondents identifying as Communist or probationary party members.A five-point scale with a range of 1 (very unhealthy) to 5 (very healthy) was used to assess one's health condition (M = 4.41, SD = 0.68).Pandemic-related fear was used based on Wu-Ouyang and Hu ( 2022), M = 3.07, SD = 1.15, α = .96.Working-from-home was assessed by asking workers to rate their frequency of WFH status on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = seldom to 5 = always) (M = 4.00, SD = 1.00).Social media use for news was measured in terms of social media use frequency for information seeking and information related to COVID-19 since it reflects the specific lockdown context in this study (α = .78,M = 3.98, SD = 0.82).Mobile phone usage was measured by asking participants to self-report their daily phone usage category, with the mean sets between 3 and 5 h (M = 3.74, SD = 1.24).The summary of variables can be seen in Table 1.

Data Analysis
SPSS was utilized to examine the study variables.To get a broad overview of the relationships, I first performed bivariate correlations among the key research variables.
As can be seen in Table 2, the variables were significantly correlated with each other.
It is noted that though news-limiting curation was positively correlated with news-boosting curation (b = .58,p < .001),given that the magnitude of correlations must be above .80to meet the common criteria for assessing the same instrument (Cohen 2013), the analysis suggests that they are different concepts.
The multiple regression analyses were further conducted to uncover the relationships without confounding variables.Table 3 shows the overall regression models together with all controls as covariates.All VIF values were below 2.5.
The PROCESS macro (Table 4) was utilized to respectively conduct mediation analysis for news-boosting and news-limiting curation.The results first indicated that the overall models for news-boosting [F (11, 1182) = 176.13,p < .001]and news-limiting [F (11, 1182) = 79.37,p < .001]curation were significant, responding to H3.According to Table 4 and Figure 1, all main paths revealed significant results.Interestingly, though the direct relationship between FoMO and news-boosting/news-limiting curation was positive, the indirect results of FoMO on news-boosting curation and news-limiting curation were in opposite valence.In particular, the pathway from FoMO via fatigue to news-boosting curation was negative (B = −.02,bootstrapping 95% LL = −.05,95% UL = −.002), while the indirect relationship between FoMO and news-limiting curation through social media fatigue was significantly positive (B = .10,bootstrapping 95% LL = .05,95% UL = .14).The implications are discussed.

Robustness
Several robust analyses were conducted to test whether the results are robust to alternative methods.Firstly, I conducted the same analyses in R using the mediation package, which allows users to investigate the role of causal mechanisms using  different models (Tingley et al. 2014).The results were the same as the above, indicating that both average causal mediation effects (ACME) were significant (ACME news-limiting = .09,bootstrapping 95% LL = .05,95% UL = .14;ACME news-boosting = −0.02,bootstrapping 95% LL = −0.04,95% UL = −0.002).
Secondly, the same analyses with each curation strategy as covariate (i.e., control news-boosting curation when predicting news-limiting curation) were conducted and the results are the same.Third, to further support the proposed relationship, I exchange the independent variable (FoMO) and dependent variable (news curation).The results indicated the overall model fit were lower for both models and some relationships were insignificant.For example, the indirect relationship between news-boosting and FoMO (B = .00,bootstrapping 95% LL = −0.01,95% UL = .02)and the relationship between news-boosting and social media fatigue (B = .02,bootstrapping 95% LL = −0.06,95% UL = .10)became insignificant.When explaining FoMO using news-limiting variable, the total effects size decreased from .33 to .22,showing the poorer model fit.Fourth, I expanded the dataset to include individuals working on-site (n = 230) and re-ran the analysis to make the model more robust.The results showed a similar conclusion.Specifically, FoMO is positively associated with fatigue (b = .37,p < .001);fatigue is negatively related to news-boosting curation (b = −0.05,p < .05)and positively related to news-limiting curation (b = .25,p < .001).

Discussion
This study contributes to the field of news curation research by developing the curated flows framework and examining the affective mechanism of personal news curation.Based on SSO model, the findings of the large-scale survey (N = 1198) unveiled one of the affective mechanisms behind individuals' decisions to balance their need for information and avoid news fatigue through FoMO and news fatigue in social media.
The results first supported the positive relationship between FoMO and social media news fatigue.Performed as a strain in SSO model, social media news fatigue would be positively influenced by stressful FOMO, which is consistent with previous research (e.g., Alfasi 2022;Zhou and Tian 2023).This implies that FoMO, as a stressor, will increase users' cognitive burden and exacerbating the feeling of news fatigue.
Second, the results emphasize the need for distinguishing between news-limiting and news-boosting curation and demonstrate the divergent effects of social media news fatigue on these distinct strategies.Although news-boosting and news-limiting curation were strongly correlated (b = .58,p < .001),they are neither equivalent nor opposite concepts.On the one hand, the results indicated that high levels of news fatigue were positively associated with news-limiting curation, which suggests that individuals tend to limit their exposure to social media news to alleviate stress and reduce the cognitive burden associated with news fatigue.This is congruent with previous research suggesting news exhaustion leads to news-limiting, discontinuance, or avoidance behaviors (Lor, Oh, and Choi 2022;Song, Jung, and Kim 2017;Ye et al. 2022), indicating that individuals who experience information overload and stress may opt to withdraw from their information feeds as a coping strategy.
On the other hand, the study found that individuals with high levels of news fatigue tend to engage in less news-boosting curation, which suggests that when social media users experience fatigue, they may not be likely to boost news into their feeds.This behavior may protect individuals coping with exhaustion caused by social media consumption.While this result is unexpected and inconsistent with other research showing that when facing information overload, individuals will engage in news consumption (Auxier and Vitak 2019;Merten 2021;Park 2019), it is consistent with some prior research (Jiang 2022;Park 2019) showing people will engage in less news-boosting curation.One possible explanation for this discrepancy may be individuals' preferences for certain types of content.Some individuals prefer news that aligns with their existing beliefs and values (Joris et al. 2021), especially when experiencing news fatigue, which may lead them to limit their diverse news sources and not engage in more news-boosting behavior.On the other hand, individuals who do not have an exact preference for like-minded information but instead have their own media diet (such as preferring professional or diverse information) may proactively boost their news feed in a diverse way.Thus, preference for a type of information may moderate the relationship between news fatigue and news-boosting curation.Future research can explore people's preferences regarding various types of curated content (e.g., content similarity, content diversity, and collaborative similarity from Joris et al. 2021).Another possible explanation is the context of working from home, where individuals tend to receive more online news and information (Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė, and Goštautaitė 2019).Such excessive news consumption may create higher news fatigue, leading to less news-boosting curation.
Third, with regard to the study's final hypothesis concerning the effects of FoMO on two types of news curation, the findings demonstrated both direct and indirect relationships.In terms of the direct relationship, the results examined the positive effects of FoMO on both news-limiting and news-boosting curation, which is consistent with some prior research suggesting that negative emotions are associated with limited news consumption (Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020;Villi et al. 2022) and increased information-seeking behavior (Albertson and Gadarian 2015;Joris et al. 2021).This suggested FoMO, as a negative mental state, can lead to proactive news curation behaviors keeping people informed by using news-boosting curation and protecting them from knowing too much through news-limiting curation.As such, they may be able to consume news to remain informed and connected without exceeding their limit, which may result in adverse effects.
Nonetheless, when considering individuals' news fatigue, the balance of being informed and protected between FoMO and news curation appears to be challenged.Social media news fatigue serves as a crucial mediator that suppresses the relationship between FoMO and news curation.Notably, while the direct relationship between FoMO and news-boosting curation is positive, the indirect relationship via news fatigue is negative.Meanwhile, though the positive relationship between FoMO and news-limiting curation remains, the magnitude is significantly reduced (from B = .25 to B = .09).Following the principles outlined by Hayes and Rockwood (2017), this suggests the importance of social media news fatigue as a suppressor, substantially decreasing the magnitude of the effect of FoMO on news-boosting curation.Consistent with the study's theoretical framework, this result indicates that individuals high in FoMO are more likely to experience higher levels of news fatigue, which in turn leads them to engage in more news-limiting and less news-boosting curation.
Therefore, the finding suggests individuals coping with news fatigue tend to exhibit a preference between being informed and being protected-that is, being more protected through news-limiting curation and less informed through news-boosting curation.This supports previous research indicating that when individuals experience negative emotions, they may limit their news consumption rather than boost it (Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020;Villi et al. 2022).This is understandable, as excessive news consumption can require significant cognitive effort, and individuals may limit their exposure to news to preserve their well-being (Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020;Toff and Nielsen 2022).Such news curation strategies may enable individuals to cope with the fatigue and FoMO aroused by social media.
Notably, these news curation strategies, which involve more news-limiting and less news-boosting curation, may also signal a potential trend toward a narrower news repertoire, as suggested by Merten (2021).Over time, such preferences may have significant implications for the cultivation of an informed citizen, as limiting information in one's feed poses a greater threat to political tolerance and civic engagement than just incorporating more like-minded information.While news-boosting curation may not necessarily lead to selective exposure and opinion reinforcement, news-limiting curation may potentially lead to encountering fewer differing views.This outcome has been argued by Mutz (2006) to be harmful to civic society, as it limits opportunities for individuals to hear the other side.When people refuse to embrace cross-cutting views and encounter less diverse information, they may become less aware of the rationales behind oppositional perspectives, leading to a less informed citizenship and less tolerant society (Chen, Kim, and Chan 2022;Matthes et al. 2019).Therefore, it is crucial to further investigate users' news curation practices and encourage constructive discussions of diverse perspectives.
This result might also provide an alternative explanation to a recent study by van Erkel and Van Aelst (2021) that suggested information overload is negatively related to political knowledge.The results suspect news-limiting curation may perform as a mediator in this relationship.Given the overwhelming amount of news and information available, individuals may intentionally delete, block, or unfollow certain social media accounts to limit their news consumption, which could ultimately result in decreased political knowledge.Future studies may empirically investigate the potential political consequences of news curation behaviors.
Additionally, this study investigated the prevalence of two types of personal news curation in the context of WFH to shed light on the possibilities of such practices on Chinese social media platforms.The descriptive statistics revealed that news-boosting (M = 3.78, SD = 0.89) and news-limiting (M = 3.52, SD = 0.97) curation are common practices among Chinese social media users.Importantly, a higher frequency of WFH was associated with higher levels of news fatigue (B = .07,p < .01),which in turn was positively related to more news-limiting and less news-boosting curation.The results echo previous telework research (Fridchay and Reizer 2022;Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė, and Goštautaitė 2019) and provide practical recommendations for workers experiencing FoMO and news fatigue to adopt less demanding news curation strategies.

Limitations and Conclusion
Several limitations need to be acknowledged while drawing the conclusion.First, as this research was conducted in China, several country-level factors (such as political orientation) may influence the results which prevent it from generalizing to the greater population.For example, in classic selective exposure research, individuals' political predisposition may affect their attention to the news (Iyengar and Hahn 2009;Stroud 2011).Recent research, such as that by Merten (2021) has found that ideological extremism is linked with news-limiting curation, but this was only supported in a U.S. sample.However, in the current study, political affiliation did not impact either news fatigue or two types of news curation strategies.Future studies can examine this model in other countries and employ cross-country comparisons.
Second, the research was conducted in the context of WFH during COVID-19.Such a context may have influenced social media news consumption.For example, news avoidance might have increased due to the information overload caused by COVID-19.Since it is difficult to find a whole society where most workers are WFH, the lockdown context provides a suitable natural experiment field for exploring the study's research questions.Future studies can explore whether the proposed model is applicable in other WFH contexts.
Third, the current study only explores the antecedents of news curation strategies without exploring their impacts.However, it can be expected that news-limiting curation would be associated with decreased exposure to diverse issues, which, in turn, decreases people's political tolerance and endangers civic engagement.Meanwhile, news-boosting curation might increase political reinforcement and news diversity.Future studies should examine the political consequences of news curation strategies.
Additionally, although the study has a cross-sectional design per se, mediation analyses can still be valuable based on a theoretical foundation and on robustness checks, which also reflect the trend of reliance on theory and logical reasoning (Chan, Hu, and Mak 2022).However, future research may benefit from incorporating experiments using smaller samples to further verify the hypothesized relationships and strengthen the causal inference.
Despite these limitations, this study makes a valuable contribution to the field of news curation research by developing curated flows and investigating the affective mechanism involved in personal news curation.By introducing the line of research from FoMO, this study examines the roles of FoMO and news fatigue on personal news curation.Individuals who experience FoMO are more likely to suffer from news fatigue and consequently exhibit a preference for being protected (news-limiting curation) rather than being informed (news-boosting curation).However, such curation strategies may result in a narrower news repertoire and be detrimental to the cultivation of an informed citizen.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Final model for the affective mechanism of personal news curation in social media.Note.as stated in robust test, the same analyses with the other curation strategy as covariate were conducted, and the conclusions are the same.

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics of study variables.

Table 2 .
Correlation matrix of study variables.

Table 3 .
multiple regressions for the main study variables with controls as covariates.

Table 4 .
summary of the indirect effects of Fomo on two types of news curation.