An informed audience: The effects of constructive television news on emotions and knowledge

Abstract

The aim of this study was to gain more insight in the way people process information after watching constructive news. In this regard, an experiment (N = 575, 18 – 90 years old) was conducted to investigate how constructive, compared to nonconstructive, news reporting affected information processing (i.e., factual and perceived knowledge) of television news, and whether emotions caused by the news mediated this relation. For this experiment the topics of two socially relevant issues were used; plastic waste in the ocean and the housing market. Results showed that constructive reporting elicited lower levels of negative emotions and higher levels of positive emotions compared to nonconstructive news. Moreover, we found that the mediation of emotions was largely dependent on the topic of the news. While more negative feelings led to more factual knowledge of the housing market topic, an increase of positive emotions led to higher perceived knowledge scores on both the housing market and plastic waste topic. These results stress the importance for both researchers and journalists to balance constructive news elements in news reporting in order to optimize information processing of the audience.