What Do People Watch under Adversity? Testing Interactions of Semantic Affinity and Coping Style Using Netflix Data Donations

Media are frequently used for coping with everyday stressors, but little is knownabout what content individuals choose under such adversity. Building on mood managementtheory’s propositions about semantic affinity of content, we test how adversity in specific lifedomains is reflected in choice of entertaining media content surrounding the same lifedomain. In combining diary data from n = 122 Netflix users and data donations of theirviewing histories with n = 2,122 titles, our study provides a novel methodological approach.Our findings show no effects of daily adversity on selecting content with more or lesssemantic affinity, but exploratory analyses reveal that situational media coping strategiesdifferentially relate to the selection of different entertainment genres. These results emphasize(a) a lack of conceptual clarity surrounding semantic affinity in real-life media use, and (b)the importance of situational approaches in media coping research.