Interest matters: The effects of constructive news reporting on Millennials’ emotions and engagement

Abstract

News media seem to have insufficient knowledge on how to reach Millennials. An important question is how professional journalism can prevent the disillusion that a growing number of Millennials experience when consuming news. Constructive journalism is often propagated as a way to improve the well-being and engagement of readers. To test this, the current study investigated the effects of constructive news on emotions and online engagement. In an experiment, 20–40-year-old participants (n = 341) read a story containing constructive elements or not. Findings showed constructive news elicited lower levels of negative and higher levels of positive and inspirational emotional responses. Furthermore, reading constructive news partly affected readers’ actual online behaviour: Millennials who read the constructive news ‘liked’ this news more often. These results suggest that constructive journalism might be a viable strategy to attract younger news users, especially when the news topic is relevant to their lives.

Keywords

constructive journalism emotions engagement Millennials news effects news users

It is generally accepted that for a well-functioning democracy it is important to have well-informed citizens (McQuail, 2013: 37). News is seen as an important source in this process, giving journalists the responsibility to provide citizens with accurate, necessary, and relevant information (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2007: 3). Due to social-cultural, technological and economic developments at the turn of the century, the news process changed fundamentally (Hermans and Drok, 2018). Journalism has lost its monopoly position as a news supplier, and a scarcity of news shifted to an overflow of available information. Moreover, the relatively passive news audience has been replaced by active news consumers who can use news on their own terms.

Even though nowadays news is available anytime and anywhere, research shows that especially the younger generations often ignore mainstream news media (Curran et al., 2013; Drok et al., 2018; Mindich, 2005). Studies also show that this is not so much caused by a lack of news interest, but reasons probably lie in journalism practices itself (Drok et al., 2018; The Media Insight Project, 2015). Millennials, for example, experience a large gap between what they want and expect from news, and what professional journalism offers. They criticize news for being too elite- and institutionally focused (Vogel, 2014), for being not relevant or valuable to their own life (Costera Meijer, 2007; Galan et al., 2019: 53) and they feel frustrated about the focus being predominantly on the negative in news selection and news coverage (Galan et al., 2019: 55; Newman et al., 2019: 26). Millennials want news stories ‘that can inspire them about the possibility of change and provide a path to positive action’ (Galan et al., 2019: 55). An important question, therefore, is how journalism can temper or prevent the disillusion that a growing number of Millennials experience when consuming news.

A possible strategy to accomplish this is to start from a more public-oriented approach, as put forward by constructive journalism. The public-oriented model of journalism, that gained popularity in the last century (Bro, 2019) attaches a higher value to civic responsibility and incorporates a more engaged form of journalism in which journalists understand, connect and collaborate with their public (Hermans and Drok, 2018; Nelson, 2019). These principles also underlie the approach of constructive journalism.

Constructive journalism critically questions the conflict-driven, negative bias in news coverage. It aims to empower and engage people by bringing accurate and balanced news that covers a diversity of perspectives and sources (Gyldensted, 2015: 25; Haagerup, 2017: 46). In doing so, constructive news might counterbalance the concerns Millennials express with regard to mainstream news. Therefore, the aim of this study is to give more insight into the effects of using constructive elements in news on the emotions and online engagement of Millennials.¹

Theoretical background

Constructive journalism arose from within journalism practice about a decade ago. It wants to provide citizens with accurate and contextual news on socially relevant issues, without over-emphasizing the sensational and what goes wrong (Gyldensted, 2015: 8; Haagerup, 2017: 27). Citizens are seen as important actors in the news process, and thus journalists should take people’s news preferences, needs, and appreciation as important input in their work (Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019). Given their important function in society, journalists obviously cannot ignore problems that are relevant for people and society, but they can decide how to report on these events.

In the past, media effect studies have been dominated by the emphasis on understanding the harmful effects of media use. Results show that exposure to negative media messages causes negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety (Lecheler et al., 2013). These negative feelings narrow the scope of attention and can increase people’s feelings of inefficacy and lack of control (Garland et al., 2010). Taking behavior sciences and especially positive psychology as a starting point (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004), research began to focus more on how media exposure can contribute to the well-being of individuals as well as societies (Reinecke and Eden, 2017). Fredrickson’s (2001, 2004) broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions broaden one’s awareness, and encourage one to pursue novel paths of thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadened behaviour will expand physical, intellectual, and social resources that can be stored and used in the long run when necessary.

Based on principles from positive psychology, constructive journalism aims to develop techniques that can be applied during news selection and production processes while holding true to journalism’s core functions. By using these techniques and including for example elements such as solution-, future-, and action-oriented perspectives, constructive journalism aims to produce news that makes people feel less negative and more positive. Constructive journalism is expected to inspire, to give hope, and to contribute to people’s abilities to act on problems (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

In the following section, we discuss previous research that investigated the effects of constructive elements in news on the emotions and engagement of news users.

Constructive journalism: Effects emotions

Empirical studies investigating the effects of constructive journalism gained popularity several years ago. Most of these studies are audience effect studies that use an experimental design. They focus on differences in the effects of reading or seeing a mainstream, nonconstructive news item and a version that includes one or more constructive elements. Often, the presence of a solution-based perspective and/or the inclusion of positive emotions are used as important characteristics to define constructive news. Participants’ emotions, both positive and negative, are then measured after or both before and after seeing the news item. Results show that participants that read a constructive story feel more positive and less negative than participants that read a nonconstructive story (McIntyre, 2015, 2019; McIntyre and Gibson, 2016; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018). When the change in emotions before and after exposure to the news item is calculated, a smaller decrease of positive emotions and a smaller increase of negative emotions in the constructive than nonconstructive group is found. These results are found for adults between 18 and 72 years old (McIntyre, 2019; McIntyre and Gibson, 2016; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017) as well as for children between 8 and 13 years old (Kleemans et al., 2017a, 2017b; Kleemans et al., 2019).

If expectations about the effects of constructive elements in news are not confirmed, authors often critically reflect on the topic of the articles they used in the experiment. Some authors suggest that the perceived relevance of the issue could be an explanatory factor. For example, Kleemans et al. (2017a) found that a story about a white rhino had more impact on both the negative and positive emotions of children than a story about gun control in the United States, irrespective of whether the child read a constructive or a nonconstructive story. In addition, the children who read the white rhino story showed more intention to engage. The authors argued that these results could possibly be explained by the identification with the topic of the article: Children really like news about animals, which may make it easier for them to identify with this topic.

A similar explanation was given by McIntyre (2019), who argued that, for adults, ‘it stands to reason to believe that stories might be more impactful to those who find the topic relevant to their own lives’ (p. 24). The author, therefore, used a highly relevant story and a less-relevant story in her study and found that both negative and positive emotions were most affected by the highly relevant story, irrespective of whether the participant read a no-solution, an ineffective solution or an effective solution-based story. Hence, McIntyre (2019) concluded that although relevancy of the story topic did not moderate the relationship between solution information and any of the outcome measures, ‘topic relevancy had many main effects, showing its importance with news stories in general’ (p. 30). Overall, these studies show that personal relevance and identification with the news topic seem to affect readers’ responses to the news. This is in line with research showing that Millennials want news that is about them and their daily life, that can serve as a basis for conversation and provides inspiration (Costera Meijer, 2007; Galan et al., 2019). Therefore, the current study includes different story topics that are expected to be relevant to Millennials.

Based on earlier findings looking at the effects of constructive elements on people’s emotions, and expecting that personal relevance (and thus interest) of the topic does play a role, we formulate the following hypothesis and research question:

H1: Reading constructive news will lead to (a) more positive emotions and (b) less negative emotions in Millennials than reading nonconstructive news.

RQ1: Does interest in the story topic moderate the relationship between news version read and perceived emotions?

Constructive journalism: Effects online engagement

Another important concern is that the declining use of mainstream news media by Millennials merges with a decrease in social engagement. As constructive journalism is ‘likely to led to lower anxiety, greater happiness and optimism and greater citizen engagement’, ‘society’s interest would be better served if the news were more constructive’ (Baden et al., 2019: 1956). According to Fredrickson (2001), positive emotions share the ability to broaden people’s thought-action repertoires which will motivate people to engage.

As new online platforms for digital news trigger new news routines (Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink, 2015), these new platforms also bring novel, interactive forms and possibilities to demonstrate involvement, thereby widening people’s awareness and stimulating their engagement (Hargittai and Shaw, 2013; Lee, 2015).

The expression of online engagement is particularly attractive for younger groups due to their large-scale use of social media networks (Newman et al., 2019: 12) in which interactivity, participation, and networking are key features (Shehata et al., 2016; The Media Insight Project, 2015; Zuckerman, 2014). People can use these social media networks to express their engagement via online behaviour in different ways. They can share and like messages, post comments and generate content (Ha et al., 2018; Krebs and Lischka, 2019), sign an online petition (Boulianne, 2015; Zuckerman, 2014), and donate money (Baden et al., 2019; Zuckerman, 2014). All these activities are easily obtainable through buttons originally introduced by Facebook but now widespread and integrated on websites and social network pages of many news producers. By using these interactive buttons, people show their engagement and making it visible for all their digital connections on top of that.

Previous research provides some indications that constructive news affects the (online) engagement of readers (Baden et al., 2019; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018). However, findings are preliminary and ambiguous. For example, some studies found that that exposure to constructive news resulted in higher motivations to donate to charity, be environmentally friendly and take action, and to stronger behavioural intentions, such as read similar stories (cf. McIntyre and Sobel, 2017), share the story on social media (cf. Meier, 2018), sign a petition, like the story on Facebook, donate money or volunteer (Baden et al., 2019). However, other studies did not support these findings (Kleemans et al., 2017a, 2017b; McIntyre, 2019; McIntyre and Gibson, 2016) or showed results in the opposite direction, with readers of nonconstructive news showing higher levels of intention to share the articles than readers of constructive news (Curry et al., 2016).

Several explanations have been brought forward to explain these contradicting findings. One explanation might be that participants’ actions were measured indirectly. Asking about participants’ motivations and intentions might lead to socially desirable responding, therefore making it difficult to conclude whether constructive news influences actual engagement behaviour. Another explanation might lie in the content of the article a participant read. It can be assumed that the news issue needs to be of interest to respondents before they take the effort to show their engagement by means of performing an action on for example social media. Given the ambiguous results of previous research, the possible role interest in the news topic might play and because this study measures actual online behaviour, we formulate the following research questions:

RQ2A: Will reading constructive news lead to more online engagement behaviour among Millennials than reading nonconstructive news?

RQ2B: Does interest in the story topic moderate the relationship between news version read and online engagement behaviour?

Method

A two by three between-subjects experiment was designed to examine the effects of constructive news reporting. The independent variables were News Version (constructive news, nonconstructive news) and Story Topic (burnout among youngsters, plastic soup, Great Barrier Reef). To check the manipulations of the stimulus material, we conducted a pretest among a separate sample of participants.

Materials

Actual news stories were used to create a nonconstructive and a constructive version of a news article. Three different news topics were included in this study to investigate whether the topic of the article influenced the results. Headline, lead, headers and the final paragraph of the news article were edited to create two versions (nonconstructive versus constructive). The two versions with the same topic had about the same length, see Table 1. The basic information in the nonconstructive and constructive versions was comparable: At least seventy percent of the information in the articles overlapped.

Table 1.

Results of the pretest of the stimulus material.

	Nonconstructive news articleM (SD)	Constructive news articleM (SD)
Burnout amongst youngsters
Number of words	482	488
Positive*	4.23 (2.35)	6.54 (1.76)
Solution-based**	4.85 (2.91)	7.69 (1.49)
Problem*	8.92 (0.95)	8.08 (1.61)
Interesting*	8.77 (0.93)	7.92 (1.38)
Great Barrier Reef
Number of words	491	491
Positive***	3.32 (2.00)	6.11 (1.41)
Solution-based***	3.21 (2.32)	7.21 (1.36)
Problem*	7.89 (2.02)	7.11 (1.59)
Interesting	7.32 (1.70)	7.53 (1.61)
Plastic soup
Number of words	490	491
Positive**	4.06 (2.48)	6.39 (1.14)
Solution-based**	4.39 (2.70)	7.33 (1.19)
Problem	7.67 (1.37)	7.28 (1.60)
Interesting	7.06 (1.86)	6.83 (1.34)

Outcomes were measured on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much). Comparing the nonconstructive news article and the constructive news article, *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Studies support the inclusion of positive emotions (e.g. elements of hope and inspiration) and solution-based information to optimize the impact of constructive reporting (Fredrickson, 2000; Kahneman et al., 1993; McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018), and therefore both these elements were included in the headline, lead, headers and the final paragraph of the constructive versions of the news articles (full-text material in Dutch or a more detailed description of the material can be obtained via the corresponding author).

Pretest

Participants and procedure

The main aim of the pretest was to check whether the topic used in the articles were of Millennials’ interest and whether they thought the topic reported on a problem (McIntyre, 2019). Furthermore, we wanted to verify whether the constructive version of the news articles was perceived as positive and solution-based by the participants. The pretest sample consisted 54 participants (27 female, 26 male, 1 other, M_age = 24.8, SD_age = 3.09). Participants read two news articles: both the constructive and the nonconstructive version of one topic.² The topic of the stories assigned to each participant was fully randomized. After each story, participants answered several questions about the articles.

Measures

To test whether the constructive version of the article differed from the nonconstructive version, participants were asked to indicate on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much), how positive and interesting they perceived each story, whether they thought the versions included solution-based information, and whether they thought the articles reported on a problem. The constructive version was expected to be perceived as more positive and including more solution-based information than the nonconstructive version. It was not expected that the perceived interest and problem would differ between the two versions.

Pretest results

As shown in Table 1, significant differences between the nonconstructive and the constructive news article were found for all three story topics. Compared to the nonconstructive news version, participants perceived the constructive news article as significantly more positive and providing more solution-based information. The pretest also showed that the issues chosen in this study tackled some points of attention mentioned in earlier studies: Topics of the stories were perceived as problematic (McIntyre, 2015, 2019), and participants stated to have high levels of interest for all three story topics (Kleemans et al., 2017b; McIntyre, 2019). Overall, the results of the pretest confirmed the manipulation was successful.

Main study

Participants

The sample of the main study originally consisted of 430 Dutch respondents recruited by CG Research (https://www.cgresearch.nl/). Participants who completed the survey in less than 2.5 minutes (n = 53) were excluded on the basis that they would not have had enough time spent to read the news article and answer the questionnaire. Another 36 participants were removed because they did not respond to any outcome measures (n = 19) or gave the same answer for different variables (n = 17). The final sample consisted of 341 respondents (181 female, 160 male), ranging from 20 to 40 years old (M = 29.1, SD = 5.60).

Procedure

Participants were approached by CG Research (https://www.cgresearch.nl) to take part in an online survey. Respondents that choose to participate were redirected to a Qualtrics study (https://www.qualtrics.com/), where a short description of the study was given. After giving consent, participants first responded to a few demographic questions before they were randomly assigned to one of the six news story versions and asked to read the story carefully. Finally, participants responded to several questions measuring the outcome variables. Upon submitting the survey, participants were thanked and received a small incentive for their participation. A randomisation check showed that the participants of the six conditions did not differ based on age, F(5, 335) = 1.39, p = 0.228, gender, F(5, 335) = 1.44, p = 0.209, educational level, F(5, 335) = 0.60, p = 0.699, or general news interest, F(5, 335) = 0.80, p = 0.548), see Table 2.

Table 2.

Main study: Participants characteristics.

	Nonconstructive news article			Constructive news article
	Burnout (n = 58)	Plastic soup (n = 57)	Great Barrier Reef (n = 58)	Burnout (n = 54)	Plastic soup (n = 56)	Great Barrier Reef (n = 58)
Age	29.5 (5.15)	28.0 (5.52)	29.8 (5.65)	30.4 (5.63)	28.4 (6.02)	28.8 (5.51)
Gender (male)	48.3%	52.6%	44.8%	57.4%	33.9%	44.8%
Educational level	Low 13.8%	Low 21.1%	Low 19.0%	Low 20.4%	Low 23.2%	Low 24.1%
	Middle 63.8%	Middle 47.4%	Middle 39.7%	Middle 31.5%	Middle 41.1%	Middle 39.7%
	High 22.4%	High 31.6%	High 41.4%	High 48.1%	High 35.7%	High 36.2%
News interest	67.7 (17.9)	66.3 (21.7)	67.0 (21.0)	72.4 (18.0)	70.5 (19.4)	69.9 (19.2)
Topic interest	66.1 (20.8)	63.8 (22.9)	61.2 (25.4)	64.2 (22.9)	63.9 (22.3)	62.4 (19.0)

Age, News interest and Topic interest: Mean (SD).

Measures

In order to measure the dependent variable emotional responses, four primary emotions – joyful, angry, sad, and scared (Keltner et al., 2014) – were used. In addition, the emotions inspired, interested, and afraid (based on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, cf. Thompson, 2007; Watson et al., 1988) and the emotions content, hopeful, positive, and involved were included, because these feelings are repeatedly mentioned as being significant in the literature on positive psychology (Fredrickson, 2004; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Finally, powerless was included, because this emotion is frequently mentioned as a reason for deliberately avoiding the news (Newman et al., 2017: 41, 2019: 25). For each emotion, we asked the participants to indicate how they felt after reading the news article on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (very much), using a slider.

A principal component analysis (PCA) with oblique rotation (direct oblimin) was conducted on the items measuring the emotional responses, including the seven positive emotions and the five negative emotions. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure verified sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.86), and Bartlett’s test of sphericity agreed that the correlations between the items were large enough to conduct PCA, χ² (66) = 2051.2, p < 0.001. Both the criterion of component loadings >0.4 and the criterion of dimensions with eigenvalues >1 (cf. Field, 2013) yielded three components for the PCA. Based on this, the following three variables were constructed:

Positive emotions The variable positive emotions was constructed by calculating the mean score on the items joyful, content, positive, and hopeful (Cronbach’s α = 0.89; M = 40.2, SD = 23.8).

Negative emotions The variable negative emotions was constructed by calculating the mean score on the items angry, sad, scared, afraid, and powerless (Cronbach’s α = 0.83; M = 44.6, SD = 21.5).

Inspirational emotions The variable inspirational emotions was constructed by calculating the mean score on the items inspired, involved, and interested (Cronbach’s α = 0.79; M = 52.9, SD = 21.7).

Online engagement as the dependent variable was measured by means of online behaviour using actual working buttons at the bottom of the article that read ‘like’ (30.2% liked the article), ‘place comment’ (5.3% placed a comment), ‘share’ (9.4% shared the article) or ‘act’ (12.6% used the act button). Participants were asked to use these buttons as they would normally do when using social media. An explanation for the ‘act’ button stated this button could be used when participants actively wanted to partake in, for example, donating money, signing a petition, visiting informational events, or search for more information. When the button ‘place comment’ was used, the participants could actually place a comment in the next field, when the ‘act’ button was chosen, participants could select to partake in one or more of the activities as mentioned above.

Although several studies have looked at (online) behavioural intentions or motivations (McIntyre, 2015, 2019; Meier, 2018), this study is one of the first to use actual working buttons to measure engagement via online behavior.

Besides demographic questions asking about age and gender, we asked participants about their educational level and general news interest. In addition, they were asked to indicate how interested they were in the topic of the news article they just read.

Educational level was measured using ten different educational levels customary in the Netherlands. These were recoded into three levels of education – low, middle, and high – according to the classification used by the national statistical office of the Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2016), see Table 2.

General news interest General news interest was measured asking the participants to indicate on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (very much), using a slider, how interested they were in news and current events (M = 68.9, SD = 19.6), see Table 2.

Topic interest Topic interest was measured asking the participants to indicate on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (very much), using a slider, how interested they were in the topic of the news article they just read (M = 63.6, SD = 22.2), see Table 2.

Results

Given that the PCA analysis on the items measuring the emotional responses yielded three dimensions of emotions, below the results for all three dimensions – positive, negative, and inspirational emotions – are reported.

To test H1 a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted with the variables positive emotions, negative emotions, and inspirational emotions as dependent variables, and the variables news version and story topic as independent variables. The dependent variables were both theoretically and statistically related to each other and were therefore included in one model. The variables age, gender, educational level, and general news interest were entered as covariates. To test RQ2A, we conducted a series of Pearson chi-square tests to examine the relation between news version and online engagement, for example, using the buttons below the article to like the story, place a comment, share the article or act upon reading the article. To test RQ1 and RQ2B, multiple regression analyses were conducted using Hayes’ PROCESS macro for moderation (Hayes, 2017).

Effects of constructive news on emotions

Table 3 presents the findings from the MANCOVA. Regarding the effect of covariate controls in the model, news interest was significantly related to both positive emotions and inspirational emotions. Participants who were more interested in news showed higher levels of positive and inspirational emotions. Age, gender, and educational level were not significantly related to any dependent variable.

Table 3.

MANCOVA for positive emotions, negative emotions and inspirational emotions.

	Positive emotions			Negative emotions			Inspirational emotions
	F	df	p	F	df	p	F	df	p
Covariates
Age	0.37	1	0.545	0.65	1	0.421	1.06	1	0.304
Gender	3.71	1	0.055	0.89	1	0.345	0.64	1	0.426
Educational level	2.50	1	0.115	0.37	1	0.546	0.076	1	0.783
News interest	12.7	1	0.000	3.43	1	0.065	46.1	1	0.000
Factors
News version	123.3	1	0.000	18.2	1	0.000	4.11	1	0.043
Story topic	4.13	2	0.017	17.5	2	0.000	0.52	2	0.597
News version × Story topic	0.12	2	0.890	2.81	2	0.062	0.32	2	0.729
Error		331			331			331
Model (F)	17.9	9	0.000	6.69	9	0.000	6.52	9	0.000
R²		0.33			0.15			0.15
N		341			341			341

MANCOVA: multivariate analysis of covariance; df: degrees of freedom. Results are based on MANCOVA with 2 (News version) × 3 (Story topic) factors and covariates.

Consistent with H1(a), results showed a significant main effect for news version (nonconstructive vs constructive) on positive emotions, η_p² = 0.27. Participants reported significantly more positive emotions when they read a constructive news article (M = 52.6, SD = 20.3), compared with those who read a nonconstructive news article (M = 28.2, SD = 20.5), see Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Mean scores of positive emotions, negative emotions and inspirational emotions per news version.

Story topic also had a significant main effect on positive emotions. Post hoc comparisons (Bonferroni) showed that participants reading a story about burnout amongst youngsters reported significantly more positive emotions than those reading a story about the Great Barrier Reef (p < 0.05), see Figure 2. All other post hoc comparisons were insignificant. There was no significant interaction between news version and story topic for the positive emotions.

Figure 2.

Main effects of Story topic on positive and negative emotions (range 0−100) per story topic.

Consistent with H1(b), results showed a significant main effect of news version on negative emotions, η_p² = 0.052. Participants who read a constructive news article reported significantly fewer negative emotions (M = 40.3, SD = 22.6), compared with those who read a nonconstructive news article (M = 48.8, SD = 19.7), see Figure 1. Story topic also had a significant main effect on negative emotions. Post hoc comparisons (Bonferroni) showed that participants reading a story on burnout amongst youngsters reported significantly fewer negative emotions than those reading a story about the Great Barrier Reef (p < 0.001) or about plastic soup (p < 0.001), see Figure 2. All other post hoc comparisons were insignificant. There was no significant interaction between news version and story topic for the negative emotions.

The news version read also had a significant main effect on inspirational emotions, η_p² = 0.012. Participants reported significantly more inspirational emotions when they read a constructive news article (M = 56.0, SD = 20.9), compared with those who read a nonconstructive news article (M = 49.9, SD = 22.1), see Figure 1. There was no significant main effect of story topic or a significant interaction between news version and story topic for inspirational emotions.

Research question 1 investigated whether interest in the story topic moderates the relationship between the news version read and perceived emotions. For both the negative emotions and the inspirational emotions, no significant interaction effect was found, indicating that the relationship between the news version read and these emotions was not moderated by topic interest (negative emotions: b = −0.0723, 95% CI [–0.2640, 0.1194], t = −0.7416, p = 0.4588; inspirational emotions: b = 0.0986, 95% CI [–0.0532, 0.2504], t = −1.28, p = 0.2022.).

For the positive emotions, we did find a significant interaction effect that indicated that the relationship between the news version read by the participant and positive emotions was moderated by topic interest, b = 0.2808, 95% CI [0.0882, 0.4734], t = 2.87, p = 0.0044. Each group (e.g. participants with a low, average and high topic interest) showed higher levels of positive emotions after reading a constructive than a nonconstructive news article, and this difference was biggest in the group with the highest topic interest.

Effects of constructive news on online engagement

Research question 2A – whether constructive news would lead to more online engagement among Millennials than nonconstructive news – was tested for each online behavior (e.g. liking, sharing, placing a comment, or acting) separately. There was no significant association between the news version read and whether or not a respondent placed a comment (χ²(1) = 0.819, p = 0.366), shared the article (χ²(1) = 1.956, p = 0.162) or used the act button (χ²(1) = 1.080, p = 0.299). A significant association was found between the news version read and whether or not a respondent liked the article, χ²(1) = 9.778, p = 0.002. Based on the odds ratio, the odds of a participant liking the article were 2.10 times higher if they read a constructive than if they read a nonconstructive news version, see Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Percentage of participants that did not (No) or did (Yes) like the article after reading the nonconstructive or constructive news version.

Research question 2B investigated whether interest in the story topic moderates the relationship between the news version read and online engagement. For all online behaviours, no significant interaction effect was found, indicating that the relationship between the news version read and these behaviours was not moderated by topic interest (like: b = −0.0066, 95% CI [–0.0291, 0.0158], z = −0.5779, p = 0.5633; place comment: b = −0.0302, 95% CI [–0.0850, 0.0245], z = −1.0829, p = 0.2789; share: b = −0.0304, 95% CI [–0.0700, 0.0092], z = −1.5037, p = 0.1327; and act: b = 0.0102, 95% CI [–0.0265, 0.0469], z = 0.5450, p = 0.5858).

Discussion

Millennials experience a gap in what they want and expect from news, and the news products professional journalism offers. A more constructive approach might be the answer to narrow this gap. Therefore, the current study aimed to provide more insight into how constructive journalism can temper or prevent the disillusion a growing number of Millennials experience when consuming mainstream news. We investigated whether using constructive elements in news improved Millennials’ emotional responses to news and whether their actual engagement via online behaviour was encouraged. In addition, we examined the effect of story topic interest by using three different topics, because researchers have argued the effects of using constructive elements in news might be moderated by topic relevancy (Kleemans et al., 2017a; McIntyre, 2019).

The findings revealed that participants who read a constructive news article reported more positive emotions and less negative emotions than those who read a nonconstructive news article. Therefore, this study empirically supports the theoretical notion that including constructive elements of hope and inspiration, and solution-based information in news can improve emotional responses. Moreover, our research shows this is not only the case for children (Kleemans et al., 2017a, 2017b, 2019) and adults (McIntyre, 2015, 2019; McIntyre and Gibson, 2016; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018), but also for a group known to be critical towards news and news content: Millennials.

In addition, this study showed that besides positive and negative emotions, a third type of emotions can be distinguished: Inspirational emotions. We found that Millennials experienced more inspirational emotions after reading constructive news, compared to nonconstructive news. Inspirational emotions are an interesting addition to previous research on the effects of constructive news reporting, because they underline the relationship between positive psychology and constructive journalism. Constructive journalism applies positive psychology techniques to news processes and production in an effort to create coverage which leaves people feeling more hopeful and that stimulates involvement (Gyldensted, 2015). In doing so, it broadens people’s mindset, and is expected to improve individual’s and societal well-being (Fredrickson, 2004; McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018). As previous research mainly focused on the effects of constructive news on people’s negative and positive emotions, our study is one of the first to show that constructive news leaves respondents feeling more inspired. This finding provides support for the assumption that constructive news reporting is able to involve and inspire its readers (cf. Gyldensted, 2015).

This study also emphasizes the importance of story topic interest. When participants read a story about burnout amongst youngsters, they showed most positive and least negative emotions compared to the other two topics (plastic soup and Great Barrier Reef). Moreover, the study found that topic interest moderated the relationship between constructive news and positive emotions. The topic burnout amongst youngsters elicited most positive emotions, especially when the news was constructive and when participants had a high interest in the topic. This finding supports the notion suggested earlier by McIntyre (2019) that constructive news might be more impactful to readers who find the topic relevant to their own lives. Our results imply that the inclusion of constructive elements in news might be most effectful in stories that are of high interest and personal relevance to Millennials. Even though our study showed no effect of gender or educational level on the outcome measures, future research on the effects of constructive elements should consider including these as covariates in the analyses, as other variables than topic interest might moderate the impact of constructive news.

With regard to online engagement, we found that participants who read a constructive news article were significantly more apt to ‘like’ the story than participants who read a nonconstructive news article. No other significant effects (e.g. whether or not a respondent placed a comment, shared the article, or used the act button) were found. As far as we know our study is the first to measure actual behaviour via buttons placed directly beneath the news article. By this, it counteracts socially desirable answers to questions measuring behavioural motivations or intentions. The results of our study are in line with earlier studies that found that reading a story with constructive elements leads to stronger behavioural motivations and intentions (Baden et al., 2019; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018) and provides some support for the assumption that constructive news can encourage engagement via actual online behaviour (cf. Hermans and Drok, 2018; McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018). However, more research is needed to provide insight on the effects of constructive elements in news on engagement via (online) behaviour, because aspects such as entertainment and sensation also seem to play a role (Purdy, 2017).

As constructive elements in news enhance positive and inspirational emotions, constructive journalism can be a first step to counterbalance the negative feelings Millennials experience when using mainstream news (Costera Meijer, 2007; Galan et al., 2019: 5). By using solution-, future-, and action-oriented perspectives in news, journalists are expected to connect better with Millennials’ needs for news that helps them to connect and progress in life (Drok et al., 2018; Galan et al., 2019: 54).

Several limitations should be mentioned. Constructive journalists can use a mix of elements that can be implemented and combined in various ways (Haagerup, 2017; Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019). However, this study only tested two specific constructive techniques: the inclusion of positive emotions (e.g. elements of hope and inspiration) and solution-based information. To obtain more insight into the effects of constructive elements, future research should try to identify how other components of constructive news reporting underpin the theoretical principles of constructive journalism. Furthermore, it is important to expand already existing knowledge of short-term effects of using constructive elements in news with studies investigating the effects in the long term (Hermans and Drok, 2018; Kleemans et al., 2017a). Journalists and researchers might benefit from follow-up studies using a diversity of methods (e.g. quantitative as well as qualitative) to disentangle how constructive journalism can better serve the needs of their audience. Such studies can provide insight in how journalism can continue to be important in today’s society, and contribute to Millennials’ civic and political participation. In addition, it may be relevant to investigate whether constructive news reporting can be used to oppose the decline of news consumption among Millennials (Curran et al., 2013; Drok et al., 2018; Mindich, 2005).

In conclusion, this study contributes to the field of knowledge of the effects of constructive news reporting and shows that constructive journalism might offer possibilities to enhance the relationship between Millennials and news.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their appreciation to Jolijn van Vroonhoven for her assistance with data collection. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions.

Author Note

Liesbeth Hermans, University of Applied Sciences Windesheim, Media Research Centre, Zwolle / Radboud University Nijmegen, Behavioural Science Institute, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Tineke Prins, University of Applied Sciences Windesheim, Media Research Centre, Zwolle, the Netherlands.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tineke Prins

Notes

Author biographies

Liesbeth Hermans is a professor at the Media Research Centre, University of Applied Sciences Windesheim and an assistant professor at the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the consequences the changing society has for journalistic culture and practice. The main research object at Windesheim is Constructive Journalism.

Tineke Prins is a researcher at the Media Research Centre, University of Applied Sciences Windesheim in Zwolle, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the impact of constructive elements in news on news users.

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