“Only bad news is good news.” Media makers know that bad news sells particularly well. Terrorist attacks, mass shootings or natural disasters attract more attention than all the positive reports combined. Most people also remember them longer.
However, the fact that newspapers, news programs and the Internet are full of tragedy and negative content today is not good news. It can affect the mind. Worries, fears and hopelessness increase. This is demonstrated, for example, by studies of the CoV pandemic, write Kathryn Buchanan and Gillian M. Sandstrom, from the British University of Sussex, in the specialized journal “PLOS ONE”.
Especially news that shows human depths, such as murder, child abuse or terrorism, can be very disturbing and undermine people’s belief in the good. All of this can lead people to have less and less compassion for others, becoming distrustful and apathetic, explain the two researchers in their current study. To avoid this, the current of constructive journalism has developed, in which attempts are made to contextualize reports in a different way, for example, reporting current problems in a solution-oriented way.
bad vs good news
Because not every story can be constructively told, and because there are so many terrible things happening in the world that need to be reported, Buchanan and Sandstrom wondered if there were other ways to mitigate the negative impact on media consumers, for example by reporting at events that focus on human goodness alongside the bad news.
APA/HERBERT NEUBAUER International newspapers after the attack in Vienna 2020
Because although most people react more strongly to negative things, research also shows that believing in the good comforts many and promotes general well-being. So if you see how people help other people in the face of drastic events, that can affect uninvolved bystanders as well. With this initial hypothesis, the two researchers carried out several experiments.
mix of content
The 1,800 participants were divided into several groups. All watched short one- to three-minute news clips or read short news stories. Bad, good, funny, or neutral content was shown or described. For example, one group saw reports of the terrorist attack at Ariane Grande’s Manchester concert in May 2017. A comparison group, on the other hand, saw video of how people helped those affected after the attack.
Other test subjects saw a funny comic strip, the control group watched cooking videos. In addition, combinations of different videos or texts were presented. In order to find out the effect of content, all participants were questioned in detail before and after the experiments.
emotional buffer
Negative feelings increased significantly and positive feelings decreased for people who only saw the news report about the terrorist attack. They also had a much more negative image of humanity.
However, if the negative report was combined with the positive about other helpful humans, that negative effect weakened significantly, according to the two researchers. A combination of negative and funny content also had a debilitating effect, but not as much. Other experiences, in which the positive and negative news presented had nothing to do with each other, unlike the case of the terrorist attack in Manchester, reached very similar results.
The results suggest that stories about kind and philanthropic actions can act as a kind of emotional buffer against negative news, the study says. In particular, they are able to support the belief in the good of people.
Believe in the good of people
The authors hope that the results will also reach journalists and media producers. They advocate balanced reporting that also tells positive stories. This does not mean that the news is now just reporting without substance, which should cover up reality and hide complaints, as the two emphasize in their study.
But maybe you shouldn’t provoke negative feelings by the way you dress him. So that, in the end, media consumers can’t help thinking that the world is a dark and dangerous place. “News that bring out the best in people can bring out the best out of the worst,” the researchers said in a broadcast. “It allows people to retain a belief essential to mental health: that the world and the people who live in it are fundamentally good.”