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This study investigates the appeal of sensationalist television news. News stories were content analyzed to measure the presence of sensationalist features. In addition, the stories were watched and evaluated by participants to measure the degree to which the items elicited emotional arousal and the degree to which the items were liked. As predicted, the findings showed that emotional arousal mediates effects of sensationalist features on liking and that the relationship between emotional arousal and liking takes the shape of an inverted U.

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This study addresses the self-fulfilling prophecy effect, in the domain of economic decision-making. We present experimental data in support of the hypothesis that speculative forecasts of economic change can impact individuals’ economic decision behavior, prior to any realized changes. In a within-subjects experiment, participants (N = 40) played 180 trials in a Balloon Analogue Risk Talk (BART) in which they could make actual profit. Simple messages about possible (positive and negative) changes in outcome probabilities of future trials had significant effects on measures of risk taking (number of inflations) and actual profits in the game. These effects were enduring, even though no systematic changes in actual outcome probabilities took place following any of the messages. Risk taking also found to be reflected in reaction times revealing increasing reaction times with riskier decisions. Positive and negative economic forecasts affected reaction times slopes differently, with negative forecasts resulting in increased reaction time slopes as a function of risk. These findings suggest that forecasted positive or negative economic change can bias people’s mental model of the economy and reduce or stimulate risk taking. Possible implications for media-fulfilling prophecies in the domain of the economy are considered.

Both news critics and scholars often contend that increasing competition in the news market urges journalists to sensationalize their stories. Starting from this hypothesis, this article investigates changes in the level of sensationalism in three Dutch current affairs programmes that merged in 1996 as part of a strategy to fight increasing competition. A content analysis of these programmes in 1992 and 2001 shows a partial trend towards greater use of sensationalism.

In many scholarly writings about journalism, the idea can be found that competitive pressure urges journalists to make news more arousing. This hypothesis was tested in two cultural settings: the Western European culture and the Chinese-dominated culture. A total of 3028 TV news stories from seven different markets, or 12 different news programs, were analyzed on the presence of arousing news characteristics. High competitive pressure at the market level appeared to contribute to the prevalence of arousing news, but this effect was more pronounced in the Chinese-dominated culture than in the Western European culture. Effects of high competitive pressure at the station level were only observed in the Western European culture.

The present study contributes to the external validity of the framing concept by studying the effects of frames actually utilized in newspaper articles. The study assesses the persuasive influence of such frames on the interpretation of news, and how issue involvement and attitude interfere in this process. A total of 282 participants were presented with one of three experimental versions of a newspaper article about asylum. In the first condition the asylum seekers were implicitly labeled as innocent victims, in the second as intruders. The third version is a mixed condition in which both competing frames were applied. In all three conditions an identical photograph was inserted. The findings indicate that the frame suggests how the photograph can be interpreted. However, no indications were found for a moderating role of the news readers’ issue involvement or attitude.