The Persuasive Effect of Journalistic Storytelling: Experiments on the Portrayal of Exemplars in the News

Oschatz, Corinna; Emde-Lachmund, Katharina; Klimmt, Christoph

doi:10.1177/1077699019850096

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Building on such insights, recent experimental studies by Bas and Grabe have highlighted the importance of "emotion-provoking personalization" of news, showing that including the emotional testimonies of ordinary people in investigative stories limited knowledge gaps between higher and lower education groups (e.g. Bas and Grabe, 2015) and encourages political participation (Bas & Grabe, 2016; see also Grabe et al, 2017;Oschatz, Emde-Lachmund & Klimmt, 2019). Similarly, experimental studies of stories about mass violence in Africa have demonstrated that "story personification"or stories focused on the plight of a single victimcontribute to elevating emotional responses and thereby "bolster support for intervention" (Maier, Slovic & Mayorga, 2016, p. 1012.…”

Section: News Audiences and Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Emotional Turn in Journalism Studies?

Wahl‐Jorgensen

2019

Digital Journalism

197

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This article develops the idea of an "emotional turn" in journalism studies, which has led to an increasingly nuanced investigation of the role of emotion in the production, texts and audience engagement with journalism. These developments have occurred in tandem with, and accelerated by, the emergence of digital and social media.Research on news production has shown that journalistic work has always taken emotion into consideration, shaping approaches to storytelling and presentation.However, the view of journalists as detached observers has rendered the emotional labor associated with news production invisible. Research on emotion in journalistic texts has highlighted the fact that even conventional "hard news genres" are shaped by an engagement with emotion. As studies on news audiences and emotions have shown, audiences are more likely to be emotionally engaged, recall information and take action when news stories are relatable.The affordances of digital platforms and social media have had a profound impact on the space for emotion. The expanded opportunities for participation have contributed to questioning traditional distinctions between news audiences and producers and have ushered in new and more forms of emotional expression that have spilled over into practices of news production.

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Section: News Audiences and Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Emotional Turn in Journalism Studies?

Wahl‐Jorgensen

2019

Digital Journalism

197

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“…Moreover, although it appears that the inclusion of characters' perspectives is engaging and persuasive, less is known about how these perspectives are to be represented to achieve maximal impact. A recent study found no differences in engagement and persuasion between news articles including the internal perspectives of news characters and news articles including their external perspectives (Oschatz et al, 2019). In this study, internal perspectives were established by the inclusion of thoughts and emotions.…”

Section: Literary Techniques In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 68%

The Psychological and Social Effects of Literariness: Formal Features and Paratextual Information

Appel¹,

Hanauer²,

Hoeken³

et al. 2021

Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies

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This chapter explores the effects of literariness on readers' psychological and social understandings within and beyond literary texts. Literariness is introduced as (a) a function of specific textual features that create linguistic foregrounding and (b) the positioning of a text as literary through para-textual signifiers (such as non-fiction and fiction labelling). After a brief review of the history of research on literariness, we discuss empirical studies of the role of paratext (such as non-fiction and fiction labelling) in the processing of texts and connect this research to the concepts of identification and perspective taking. We introduce research on readers' responses to the formal features of narrative and highlight the role of literary techniques in the non-literary context of journalism.

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“…During the COVID-19 pandemic media sources commonly presented both news focusing on statistics and news focusing on people's personal experience with COVID-19. This presentation of personal stories of people who suffer from COVID-19, or the personal accounts of people who cared for COVID-patients, is an often-used strategy in journalism, called exemplification (Oschatz et al, 2021;Kramer & Peter, 2020). In exemplification, a news item reports on a single case with regards to a certain topic, with a focus on personal experience and vivid details (Zillman, 1999).…”

Section: Factual Vs Personal Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most work in media science so far has examined the outcomes of engaging with different types of news (e.g., Oliver et al, 2012;Oschatz et al, 2021), manipulated motivationally-relevant aspects of news (e.g., Knobloch-Westerwick et al, 2005;Grizzard et al, 2017) or measured motivations to engage with news in general (e.g., Hoffner et al, 2009;Mothes, et al 2018; see for an overview: Knoblich-Westerwick, et al, 2020). The present study will focus on the expectations that people have about the impact of reading unique negative news items, in order to examine how these motives predict choice behavior.…”

Section: Distinct Motives To Engage With Negative Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

To read or not to read? Motives for reading negative COVID-19 news.

Niehoff¹,

Mittenbühler²,

Oosterwijk³

2022

Preprint

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People were confronted with a barrage of negative news during the COVID-19 crisis. This study investigated how anticipated psychological impact predicted decisions to read personalized and factual COVID-19 news. First, participants chose, based on headlines, whether they wanted to read news articles (or not). Then, all headlines were rated on a set of motivational dimensions. In order to test confirmatory hypotheses, the data was divided into an exploration (n = 398) and validation dataset (n = 399). Using multilevel modelling, we found robust support for four preregistered hypotheses: choice for negative COVID-19 news was positively predicted by 1) personal vs. factual news; 2) the anticipated amount of knowledge acquisition; 3) the anticipated relevance to one’s own personal situation; and 4) participant’s sense of moral duty. Moreover, exploratory findings suggested a positive relationship between headline choice and anticipated compassion, a negative relationship with anticipated inappropriateness and gratitude, and a quadratic relationship with anticipated strength of feelings. These results support the idea that negative content offers informational value, both in terms of understanding negative events, and in terms of preparing for these events. Furthermore, engagement with negative content can be motivated by moral values.

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The Persuasive Effect of Journalistic Storytelling: Experiments on the Portrayal of Exemplars in the News

Cited by 13 publications

References 45 publications

An Emotional Turn in Journalism Studies?

An Emotional Turn in Journalism Studies?

The Psychological and Social Effects of Literariness: Formal Features and Paratextual Information

To read or not to read? Motives for reading negative COVID-19 news.

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