Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/News and emotion

News and emotion:
What role does emotion play in the presentation and consumption of news?

Overview

On the fateful day of 15 April 2013, tragedy struck in Boston. As hundreds of marathon runners crossed the finish line, 2 bombs exploded killing 3 people and injuring hundreds more. A study of mental health conducted by Holman and colleagues at the University of California confirmed the expected- that those who had witnessed the event had suffered a decline in their mental health. However, another group had been even more badly shaken: Those who did not witness the explosion firsthand, but had consumed 6 or more hours of news coverage per day in the week afterwards. Curiously, having been in the vicinity during the bombing or knowing someone who was injured or died in it were not as predictive of high acute stress than the nature of one’s news consumption habits (Gorvett, 2020) during this terrible time.

- Discuss prevalence of news. <Find statistic.>

- News is a significant part of everyday life. It has many functions and is evolving.

- Emotion of both the journalist and the audience create a feedback cycle where bias is almost unavoidable and shapes the presentation of news. Consumption of news is driven by someone's understanding of and emotions about the topic (informed by previous news), the perceived negativity and threat level and their personal connection to it. The resulting consumption habits help to determine what sells and what doesn't. This calls into question journalistic integrity.

- The reach and power of the news implies a crisis of a depressed and dependent population, and an increase in the spread of misinformation. <Discuss the impact misinformation can have like racism.>

Focus questions

What is considered news?
How has news evolved?
What is the purpose of presenting and consuming news?
What factors determine the way news is presented and the effect it has on our emotions?
Can news be unbiased?
What is the relationship between news and emotion? How does one affect the other?
How can this relationship be harnessed for effective, accurate communication of information?

What is news?

Every day people are faced with many events, ideas and processes, many of which clash with one another. News monitors and interprets these concepts, conveying them to the population.
The earliest news was delivered by word of mouth. Merchants, sailors and travelers brought news to the mainland upon their return. Pedlars spread this information across towns and ancient scribes recorded it. The invention of the printing press revolutionized the transmission and reliability of news. Newspapers were the primary journalistic medium of the 18^th and 19^th century (see Figure 1), followed by radio and television in the 20^th (Reese, 2016).
<Make another point about the definition of news becoming looser and more embedded into our everyday lives in ways we may not otherwise consider, especially in terms of advertising. Talk about how we may not seek out or consent to news but still be heavily consuming it.>

Why do we consume news?

Staying informed: To learn about current events and what is happening in the world. Example: During the height of the covid-19 pandemic, many people relied on the news to keep them updated on case numbers, vaccine availability, testing site locations and rules about mask wearing and isolation periods. <Find supplemental reference, perhaps make into another case study.>
Education: To gain knowledge and understanding of different topics (Global Affairs Explained, n.d.). Example: Consuming a news segment about an endangered animal will make you more educated on animals and endangerment.
Entertainment: Some news stories are interesting or entertaining. Example: This story about a seal playfully destroying a town's traffic cones each year (Moench, 2023).
Perspective: To see different viewpoints and opinions. Example: Someone who is unsure who to vote for can access a variety of different opinions through the news to inform their judgment (Reach Out, n.d.).

The impact of news

News is very powerful, and can even influence us subconsciously. It shapes our understanding of people, places and events, and therefore:

- Determines people's attitudes and opinions.

- Can change the content of people's dreams.

- Can lead to miscalculated risks and misinformed decisions. <At a personal and governmental level>

- Increases our risk of developing PTSD, depression and anxiety disorders. <"Good news is no news", exposure to many negative and traumatizing stories>

- Affects our physical health. <Increased risk of heart attack and developing health problems later in life.>

- Contributes to societal divide and pressures. <For example, racism and classism>

- Poses economic risks (Gorvett, 2020).

Journalism and the economy

Competition is intense in the news world right now. Rivals are everywhere and endless. Diverse varieties of and distractions from news are more available to the audience than ever before, and so journalists have to fight harder to capture attention. A tried, tested and common method of doing this is by appealing to audience emotion.

Objectivity vs. emotion

- News companies/journalists may believe a certain narrative is interesting, engaging and important but they are required to objectify the process due to practical pressures, limited resources and deadlines. They need to turn complex real events into formulaic, understandable, accessible and consumable items of media. A traditional and integral principal of journalism is the idea that it presents an account that is balanced, fact-checked, including context and not including the distortion of a journalists feelings.

- However, journalists themselves are not immune to the impact of news, and have different factors shaping their worldview and their understanding of particular circumstances. It is almost impossible to have no bias in a piece. Things like which story is talked about and which facts are included and excluded indicate subjectivity, even when two sides of a story are acknowledged (Beckett, 2015). As such, emotion has always been at the core of the way a journalist presents news to an audience, the reception of the audience and the way this feedback informs the presentation of the news segments that follow. This is represented in the news cycle of "sensitive" content creation (see Figure 2). <Expand on news cycle, and how manipulation at each stage influences the nature of the next.>

- For example, yellow journalism emerged in the 1980s when 2 New York-based newspapers were battling for the top spot. It is characterized by the tactical use of exaggerated headlines, unverified claims, partisan agendas, and a focus on topics like crime, scandal, sports, and violence (Kennedy, 2019).

- We seem to be witnessing an even greater push towards emotionally charged news and straying further from objectivity and integrity to keep up with economic demands and capture the attention of a consumer before a competitor does.

Social media

According to recent research conducted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (2024), Australians are going to fewer sources to access news. In 2023, Australians used on average 3.1 different sources of news, down from 3.5 in 2022.

It also found that more Australians are choosing social media as their primary source of news content. 20% of Australians nominated social media as their main source of news in 2023, up from 17% in 2022.

Change in the presentation of news

- The increasing take-over of devices and social media mean the modern metric for news consumption are ”shares" and "likes", which rely heavily on audience approval and engagement, which is driven almost entirely by their emotions.

- This adaptation has created a shift from more formal reporting to the utilization of humor, convenience, relatability, popular figures and trends as seen in social media.

Misinformation

- Since social media is also a representation of oneself, people share the things that they believe are the “right answer” (participation bias) (Elston, 2021) or make them look better (social desirability bias) (Nikolopoulou, 2022), which is not necessarily the “truth”. <Elaborate on both biases in chapter and provide examples. Try to contextualize social media in terms of an experiment to further support relevance of the biases>

Online dialogue is more about affirming one’s own perspective than seeking accurate information. Confirmation bias (Simkus, 2023) is reinforced by the algorithms that monitor online activity- causing one to be stuck in an echo chamber of only more and more extreme versions of the views they consume and connecting them to similar others . As such, the news one receives via devices, advertising and social media is delivered to them based on their emotions, and is designed to achieve higher user satisfaction and therefore higher user engagement. This means the more content one consumes presenting a particular ideology, the more they will be fed that content, causing them to thus grow deeper beliefs about and emotional connection to the idea and creating a dangerous cycle that can easily perpetuate misinformation (Beckett & Deuze, 2016).

- As data scientist Gilad Lotan wrote (2014): “The better we get at modeling user preferences, the more accurately we construct recommendation engines that fully capture user attention. In a way, we are building personalized propaganda engines that feed users content which makes them feel good and throws away the uncomfortable bits.". <Talk about how "what makes someone feel good" may not necessarily be happy things, but rather things that don't challenge their beliefs.>

Relationships between emotion and news consumption

Negativity drives online news consumption

- There is a causal effect of negative and emotional words on news consumption.

- A study examining 105,000 different variations of news stories from "Upworthy.com" (that generated 5.7million clicks amongst 370 million overall impressions) found that even though positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates). For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%.

- Negativity in news increases physiological activations and is more likely to be remembered by users. The effect of "fear" was significantly related to article consumption (Robertson et al., 2023). For example, news telling someone they may be in danger of contracting a virus will stimulate their awareness, monitoring and thus consumption of related news. <Specify example. Look into quotes relating to fear of contracting covid and/or fear of being invaded/war.>

Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news

- Emotions are suggested to differentially impact judgement and perception, particularly of fake political news.

- In 1994, Bodenhausen et al discovered that anger elicits greater reliance on heuristic cues in a persuasion paradigm, whereas sadness promotes a decreased reliance. Literature on the relationship between emotion and gullibility found that a negative mood generally increases skepticism, whereas a positive mood increases gullibility and the ability to identity deception. (Martel et al., 2020).

- Within the realm of political fake news, anger is believed to promote politically-aligned motivated belief in misinformation, whereas anxiety is seen to increase belief in politically incongruous fake news due to increased feelings of doubt. For instance, faith in institution and one's general confidence (including when unwarranted and incorrect) in their information processing capacity are associated with belief in information and conspiracy theories that contradict scientific research.

- A study released in 2020 utilized the PANSS scale- a self-report medical resource used in the assessment of schizophrenia. For nearly every emotion evaluated on the scale, an increase correlated to an increase in belief in fake news. Furthermore, almost every emotion was found to have a significant interaction with the type of news headline in that greater emotionality also predicts decreased discernment between real and fake news. The only emotions that didn't produce significance for the context were "interested, alert, determined and attentive" which reflect the notion that emotions related to analytic thinking play an important role in critical evaluation of the validity of news presented, and consequently being able to correctly identify fake news (Martel et al., 2020). <Perhaps include other studies that have used the PANSS scale.>

- Having experience and attachment to the subject of a news story can increase susceptibility to it's message. <Find more sources to back this up.>

Test yourself!

Conclusion

It is evident that emotion plays a crucial role in the presentation and consumption of news.
Due to the evolving climate of technology, news and competition, reader attention is a limited resource and more extreme, tactical lengths are being gone to in order to capture it.
Negativity and fear attract consumption: Feedback journalists use to inform their future pieces.
Higher emotionality and faith in institution mean less analytical thinking and higher susceptibility to believing fake news: Which in itself is a factor driving further misinformation due to the workings of algorithms.
The future of news is bleak: Integrity will be replaced by more advanced and extreme versions of yellow journaling, and potentially have huge political and economic effects. Suggestions: More regulations around news, news programs about misinformation, required messages by media companies stating sources and that information cannot be considered 100% factual (similar to a disclaimer at the end of an ad), critical thinking and fact-checking workshops in schools and on social media. <Think of more specific suggestions.>

Suggestions for this section:

What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research?
What are the answers to the focus questions?
What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

References

Australin Communications and Media Authority. (2024, February 21) ACMA research reveals Australian news consumption trends. Australian Government. https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2024-02/acma-research-reveals-australian-news-consumption-trends

Beckett, C. (2015, September 10). How journalism is turning emotional and what that might mean for news. The London School Of Economics And Political Science. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2015/09/10/how-journalism-is-turning-emotional-and-what-that-might-mean-for-news/

Beckett, C., & Deuze, M. (2016). On the Role of Emotion in the Future of Journalism. Social Media + Society, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116662395

Elston, D. M. (2021). Participation bias, self-selection bias, and response bias. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2021.06.025

Global Affairs Explained. (n.d.). 6 Reasons Why The News Is Important. Retrieved August 20, 2024, from https://globalaffairsexplained.com/why-news-important/

Gorvett, Z. (2020, May 13). How the news changes the way we think and behave. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the-way-we-think-and-behave

Kennedy, L. (2019, August 22). Did Yellow Journalism Fuel the Outbreak of the Spanish American War. History. https://www.history.com/news/spanish-american-war-yellow-journalism-hearst-pulitzer

Lotan, G. (2014, August 4). Israel, Gaza, War & Data – The Art of Personalizing Propaganda. Global Voices. https://globalvoices.org/2014/08/04/israel-gaza-war-data-the-art-of-personalizing-propaganda/

Martel, C., Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. G. (2020). Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(47). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3

Moench, M. (2023. December 22). The Internet’s Newest Sensation is Neil the Seal From Tasmania. Time. https://time.com/6550164/neil-the-seal-tasmania-background-instagram-tiktok/

Nikolopoulou (2022, June 24). What is Social Desirability Bias: Definition & Examples. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/research-bias/social-desirability-bias/

Reach Out. (n.d.). The news and critical thinking: Why is it important? Retrieved August 20, 2024, from https://au.reachout.com/challenges-and-coping/the-big-issues/the-news-and-critical-thinking-why-is-it-important

Reese, S. (2016). Theories of Journalism. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.83

Robertson, C. E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K., et al. (2023). Negativity drives online news consumption. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 812-822. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4

Simkus, J. (2023, June 22). Confirmation Bias In Psychology: Definition & Examples. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/confirmation-bias.html

External links

How journalism is turning emotional and what that might mean for news (The London School of Economics and Political Science)
How the news changes the way we think and behave (BBC)
Negativity drives online news consumption (Nature Human Behaviour Journal)
Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news (Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications Journal)

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