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.

Keywords

Constructive journalism emotions information knowledge television news

That society benefits from well-informed citizens is not up for discussion. However, professional journalism, responsible for relevant and trustworthy news, is under pressure. Journalism is criticized for not adjusting sufficiently to the changing circumstances of the network society of the 21st century (Waisbord, 2013; Zelizer, 2017). Professional news rooms are frequently accused of maintaining a sender-oriented focus, thereby alienating themselves from citizens (Vogel, 2014). Such a disengagement is problematic because journalism legitimizes itself by emphasizing its social function and claiming to serve its audiences and act on their behalf (Peters and Broersma, 2017). The relationship between journalists and their public has changed considerably due to social cultural and technological developments (Hermans and Drok, 2018). There seems to be a growing group of people that ignore or even avoid the news. People indicate they have several motives for this. Dominant reasons are that news has lost relevance to them, that it does not match their preferences or interest, that it does not connect to their lives, and that it leaves them with negative feelings and a pessimistic view of the world around them (Costera Meijer, 2021; Edgerly, 2021; Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020; Toff and Kalogeropoulos, 2020).

An important challenge for today’s journalism is to (re)connect with citizens and to accommodate to peoples’ interest and needs. A way to accomplish this is to reconsider existing standards and values in journalism, and to be open to alternative approaches using a more public-oriented model (Bro, 2019; Nelson, 2019; Peters and Broersma, 2017). One of those approaches that came up in the last decade is constructive journalism (Gyldensted, 2015; Haagerup, 2017). Amongst professional journalists themselves, constructive journalism arose supplementary to traditional journalism practices. It stresses the importance of having knowledge about the impact of journalism on the audience, based on behavioural sciences like positive psychology (McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018). To improve the quality of news, journalists are asked to reconsider existing routines, and counterbalance the disproportionate attention given to conflicts, contradictions, and what goes wrong. Therefore, a constructive approach calls for new practices that produce accurate and balanced news that covers a diversity of angles, and looks for possible solution-, future- and action-oriented perspectives (Hermans and Drok, 2018; Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019). In their work, journalists still remain committed to their core values such as being independent, and critical (Gyldensted, 2015; Haagerup, 2017). With a constructive approach journalists aim to inform and tell important stories so that people understand what is going on and are able to make well-considered decisions in their private and public lives (Hermans and Drok, 2018). Therefore, it is important to evaluate the usefulness of constructive news and identify how constructive news reporting affects information processing compared to a nonconstructive style of news reporting. The aim of this study is to gather more insight in the way people process information after watching constructive news.

Theoretical background

Previous research focusing on the effects of constructive journalism has mainly looked at its impact on outcomes such as emotions, behavioural intentions, and attitudes. Most of these studies focused on written articles, and showed that adults who read a constructive article experienced less negative and more positive emotions than adults who read a nonconstructive article (Baden et al., 2019; Hermans and Prins, 2020; McIntyre, 2015, 2019; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018). Only a few studies looked at the effects of constructive reporting on emotions for audio-visual news stories. Kleemans and colleagues focused on children and found that children’s negative feelings increase less and their positive feelings decrease less for this type of news reporting (Kleemans et al., 2019; Kleemans et al., 2017). Given that daily news programmes made for television are still frequently used for acquiring news (Drok and Duiven, 2021), it is interesting to explore the effect of constructive elements in audio-visual news on the appealed emotions of adult viewers – not just children. Rusch et al. (2021) investigated this regarding television news and solution-based journalism and found similar positive results as previous studies did on the use of constructive elements in print media. While they point out it is important to consider some nuances regarding the news topic, they concluded that the solution-focused stories aroused more positive emotions, associated with greater satisfaction, optimism and sometimes interest, in adults. This is in line with the study of Hermans and Prins (2020) who found a positive effect of constructive elements in written news on so called inspiring emotions. Given the previous results found in experimental research on the effects of constructive news for adults, we formulate the following hypothesis for constructive television news:

Seeing constructive news will lead to (a) more positive emotions and (b) fewer negative emotions in participants than seeing nonconstructive news.

As one of the purposes of constructive journalism is to produce news that contributes to an informed and engaged citizenship, it is interesting to understand whether and how a constructive approach can contribute to this. However, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical underpinning on how constructive news influences information processing. Only one study on constructive news reporting for children included cognitive measurement, and findings showed ambiguous results: On the one hand, children who watched a constructive news item were less likely to recall the general information presented in both versions than children who watched a nonconstructive news item. On the other hand, these children were better at recalling specific parts of the news story than children who watched a nonconstructive variant (Kleemans et al., 2019). Besides this, there have not been any studies on cognitive responses to constructive television news for adults. The aim of this study is the substantiation of understanding adults’ cognitive responses to constructive news by building upon general information processing theories.

In an overview of early studies on the effects of visual television news Brosius (1993) concluded that results of these studies did not show a clear pattern in the recall of television items. However, cognitive responses such as what will be remembered of the news might be influenced by non-cognitive factors as well. Where Brosius (1993) concluded that emotions extend the process of encoding a message through arousal in any form (positive or negative), this is at odds with the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004) which argues that the valence of the emotions makes a big difference. According to this theory, experiencing more positive emotions can broaden one’s thought-action repertoire and by that enhance the allocation of more personal resources. This can make it easier to process a message in a controlled way and process the details of the information presented better (Lang, 2000). By contrast, the experience of negative emotions might have the opposite effect and thus narrow people’s views and behaviour (Fredrickson, 2004). Building on the broaden-and-build theory and the findings that constructive reporting leads to more positive and inspiring emotions, one might wonder if a message will be processed in a controlled way and that the detailed information of the story will therefore be remembered better when it is reported in a constructive way.

The Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing (LCM; Lang, 2000) that specifically looks into information processing, states that the brain goes into an automatic mode of paying attention whenever a message holds threatening information with a certain value of survival. This means that whenever a message contains more information that can directly threaten one’s life (like a natural disaster), the bigger the chance one’s brain will go into an automatic mode of processing. According to Wirth and Schramm (2005) this automatic state will increase people’s general recall and recognition but make them remember less of the background information of a story. This might also have to do with the fact that according to the LCM model the capacities of the human brain are limited. When there are too many stimuli presented, this can cause a cognitive overload (Lang, 2000). In other words, a negative, threatening message might stimulate the processing and recall of the information at first, but when there is too much negative information presented and the receiver feels very scared or sad, this might hold down the process. As nonconstructive news is known for its dominant negative focus (Haagerup, 2017; Harcup and O’Neill, 2017), it can be expected to have a higher negative value and value of survival than constructive news would have. Which leads to the expectation that recipients of nonconstructive mainstream news will go into an automatic mode of information processing. This automatic mode makes people subconsciously pay attention to the key features of the message. This could mean that people watching nonconstructive reporting pay more attention to the key features and therefore process this part of the message better. It seems that according to these theories (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004; Lang, 2000) emotions can have an impact on remembering different parts of the information presented and it is hard to predict how this distinction plays out. This research will provide further insight in the impact of constructive reporting on information processing such as what people remember afterwards. There has been a lot of discussion on how to measure recall and memory of news. Findahl and Höijer (1985) stated that many quantitative ways to measure news memory are superficial as information transmission in news items is not only about how much is factually remembered but also how the audience perceives the information and comprehends it.

In today’s society, where the gap between journalism and the public seems to grow (Hermans and Drok, 2018), it is important to look further then only at the factual knowledge that people remember. It is also relevant to get insight in how informed the audience feels and their perception of how much they gain from the news. Few studies looked at the effects of constructive news reporting on information processing, and they did not show equivalent results. Meier (2018) looked into perceived knowledge but found no support for the assumption that readers of constructive news might feel better informed than readers of nonconstructive news. Contrary, Curry and Hammonds (2014) concluded that readers of a solution-based news article felt better informed about the issue presented in the article. To extend the already existing research on the effects of constructive news reporting on information processing, the current study looks at factual and perceived knowledge. Furthermore, because it has been shown that emotions can influence the information process the role of emotions will be explored. In all, this leads to the following research questions:

RQ1: To what extent is there a difference between participants exposed to a constructive versus a nonconstructive style of news reporting in knowledge (factual and perceived) of news?

RQ2: To what extent is the effect of type of news reporting on participants’ knowledge (factual and perceived) mediated by the experience of (a) positive and (b) negative emotions?

Method

A two by two between-subjects experiment was designed to investigate how constructive versus nonconstructive television news reporting influences adults’ emotions and information processing. The independent variables were News version (constructive news, nonconstructive news) and Story topic (plastic waste, housing market).

Materials

To create the four different news items for this study, actual footage of the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (Nederlandse Omroep Stichting - NOS, n.d.) was compiled. We used parts of items shown in regular news programs (NOS Journaal and Nieuwsuur) as well as parts of the online program NOS op 3, a news platform focusing on youngsters. We included two different topics in the study: The environmental issue of plastic waste and the shortage on the Dutch housing market. Both topics represent important social issues that can have negative consequences for individuals as well as for society.

For the news items on plastic waste, both versions of the newscast started with the same explanation about the importance of the oceans and the introduction of the problem: Plastic waste. The constructive item continued with a hopeful message from a young Dutch man who invented an easy to build plastic shredder that could help people to contribute to the solution of the problem in the future. In the nonconstructive version, an expert brought forward the negative message there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean in 2050. No solution to the problem was included in this version. The footage of the specific parts in these versions matched the content: in the constructive version the solution was shown and in the nonconstructive version only the problem was visualised. Both news items ended with the same end tune and were of similar length, see Table 1.

Table 1.

Content of the constructive and nonconstructive version of the newscast: plastic waste. Parts of the constructive and nonconstructive version that were alike in italics.

	Constructive	Duration	Nonconstructive	Duration
Opening 1	Basic information about the ocean and its importance for life on earth	00:33	Basic information about the ocean and its importance for life on earth	00:33
Opening 2	Basic information about plastic waste	00:28	Basic information about plastic waste	00:28
Part 1	Information about microplastic	00:08	Problem-based: Expert explains danger of plastic waste in the ocean	00:42
Part 2	Solution-based: Solution presented by young man, graphic to explain how it’s used all over the world	1:04	Information about microplastic	00:11
Part 3	Hopeful future-oriented: Message that every small contribution can make a change	00:14	Hopeless future-oriented: Expert on the future	00:32
End tune		00:05		00:05
Total		02:32		02:31

For the news items on the housing market, the constructive news item started with the actions the government is taking to stimulate and improve the housing market. The nonconstructive version focused completely on the impossible situation of the housing market. Both versions continued with the same example of a man not able to find a house to illustrate the problem. The second half of the constructive news item continued with the explanation of the measures taken by the government, subsequently confirmed by an expert. It ended with the man earlier presented in the news item confirming these measures might help him to find a house. The second half of the nonconstructive news item continued with a politician stating the hopelessness of the situation. It ended with a reporter establishing that there is just not much that the government can do about the housing problem, see Table 2. Again, the visual representation matched the content and perspective of the story. Stimulus materials can be requested from the corresponding author.

Table 2.

Content of the constructive and nonconstructive version of the newscast: housing market. Parts of the constructive and nonconstructive version that were alike in italics.

	Constructive	Duration	Nonconstructive	Duration
Opening 1	Solution-based: Presenter explains measures taken by the government to stimulate housing market, and these are confirmed by a political reporter	00:38	Problem-based: Presenter explains housing market and why it is impossible for people to buy a house	00:18
Part 1	Example of a young man not able to find a house	00:28	Example of a young man not able to find a house	00:28
Part 2	Solution-based: The presenter presents two solutions to the problem, which are explained with a graphic	00:38	Problem-based: A political reporter explains the government has trouble to accomplish anything, illustrated by a quote of the minister	00:22
Part 3	Hopeful future-oriented: An expert confirms the measurements taken by the government might help in the future, and the young man from part 1 confirms this expectation	00:22	Hopeless future-oriented: The political reporter paints a hopeless picture of the future for the housing market	00:51
End tune		00:05		00:05
Total		2.11		2.04

Pretest

A pretest was conducted to verify whether the constructive versions of the news items were perceived as positive, hopeful, future-oriented, and solution-oriented by the participants. The pretest sample consisted of 95 Dutch participants ranging from 19 to 73 years old (M = 36.9, SD = 15.5, 65.3% women). These participants were recruited separately from the main study using the authors’ network. Participants first answered a few questions about their demographic background and were then randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. After watching the news item participants were asked to indicate on 7-point scales whether they thought the news item they watched was positive (1 = negative, 7 = positive), hopeful (1 = not very hopeful, 7 = very hopeful), future-oriented (1 = oriented towards the past, 7 = oriented towards the future), and solution-oriented (1 = oriented towards problems, 7 = oriented towards solutions).

As shown in Table 3, we found significant differences between the constructive and nonconstructive news item for both the plastic waste and the housing market broadcast. Compared to the nonconstructive news items, participants perceived the constructive news items as more positive, more hopeful and more solution-oriented. No significant differences were found for the variable future-oriented, which can be explained by the context of the news items. Both the constructive as the nonconstructive news items focused on the future: The constructive news items with a hopeful point of view, the nonconstructive news items future with a hopeless, negative point of view. Overall, we considered the manipulation successful.

Table 3.

Results of the pretest of the stimulus material.

	Constructive M (SD)	Nonconstructive M (SD)	F -test (ANOVA, two-tailed)
Plastic waste
Positive	5.40 (1.23)	2.52 (1.16)	F(1, 46) = 69.44, p < .001
Hopeful	5.36 (1.29)	2.87 (1.22)	F(1, 46) = 47.23, p < .001
Future-oriented	6.20 (0.71)	5.83 (1.27)	F(1, 46) = 1.629, p = .208
Solution-oriented	5.52 (1.42)	2.78 (1.35)	F(1, 46) = 46.84, p < .001
Housing market
Positive	5.00 (1.29)	2.05 (0.84)	F(1, 45) = 83.65, p < .001
Hopeful	4.88 (1.54)	2.09 (0.87)	F(1, 45) = 56.53, p < .001
Future-oriented	5.40 (1.66)	5.27 (1.12)	F(1, 45) = .092, p = .763
Solution-oriented	5.56 (1.42)	2.09 (0.97)	F(1, 45) = 93.23, p < .001

Note. Outcomes were measured on 7-point scales (7 being positive, hopeful, future-oriented, and solution-oriented). Comparing the nonconstructive and the constructive news item.

Main study

Participants

The sample of the main study originally consisted of 600 Dutch participants recruited by the independent agency CheckMarket (CheckMarket, n.d.). Data cleaning led to a reduction with 25 participants: Twelve indicated that the video and/or sound of the news item did not work, and thirteen participants were excluded because they gave the same answer to all of the questions. The final sample consisted of 575 participants (287 male, 287 female, 1 other gender), ranging from 18 to 90 years old (M = 56.4, SD = 14.5).

Procedure

Participants were approached by CheckMarket to take part in an online survey. Participants who choose to participate were redirected to a brief introduction to the study. After giving consent, participants first responded to a few demographic questions. Next, a sound and picture test were carried out before participants were randomly assigned to one of the four news items. Finally, participants responded to several questions measuring the outcome variables. Upon submitting the survey, participants were thanked and received a small thank you gift from CheckMarket for their participation. Finally, an explanation about the research was given. On average, the participants needed 11.7 minutes (SD = 8.30) to complete the questionnaire.

A randomisation check showed that the participants of the four conditions did not differ based on time of completing the survey, F(3, 571) = 2.48, p = .60; age, F(3, 571) = 0.54, p = 0.66; gender, χ²(6) = 8.91, p = .18, or level of education; χ²(6) = 2.61, p = .86, see Table 4.

Table 4.

Main study: participant characteristics.

	Constructive		Nonconstructive
	Plastic waste (n = 144)	Housing market (n = 144)	Plastic waste (n = 144)	Housing market (n = 143)
Time (minutes)	13.1 (10.9)	10.6 (5.77)	11.9 (8.95)	11.24 (6.59)
Age (years)	56.3 (13.6)	55.8 (15.3)	57.7 (13.7)	55.9 (15.6)
Gender (male)	47.9%	54.9%	54.2%	42.7%
Educational level (%)	Low 27.1	Low 22.9	Low 27.1	Low 28.0
	Middle 37.5	Middle 41.7	Middle 35.4	Middle 33.6
	High 34.7	High 35.4	High 37.5	High 38.5

Note. Time and Age: Mean (SD).

Measures

In order to measure the dependent variable emotional responses, four basic emotions – joy, anger, sadness, and fear (Keltner et al., 2014) – were used. In addition, the emotions inspired and enthusiastic (Thompson, 2007; Watson et al., 1988), and the emotion hopeful was included, as one of the objects of constructive journalism is to make people feel more inspired and hopeful (Gyldensted, 2015; Hermans and Drok, 2018). Finally, the emotion powerless was included, as traditional news is often criticized for making people feel powerless, and this emotion is frequently mentioned by people as a reason for deliberately avoiding the news (Newman et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2019). For each emotion, we asked the participants to indicate how they felt after seeing the news broadcast 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 emotional responses. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure verified sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.78), and Bartlett’s test of sphericity agreed that the correlations between the items were large enough to conduct PCA, χ²(28) = 2151.9, p < .001. Both the criterion of component loadings > 0.4 and the criterion of dimensions with eigenvalues > 1 (Field, 2018) yielded two components for the PCA. Based on this, the following two variables were constructed:

Positive emotions

The variable positive emotions was constructed by calculating the mean score on the items enthusiastic, hopeful, inspired, and joyful (Cronbach’s α = 0.86; M = 41.5, SD = 22.9).

Negative emotions

The variable negative emotions was constructed by calculating the mean score on the items anger, fear, powerlessness, and sadness (Cronbach’s α = 0.82; M = 45.5, SD = 23.6).

Knowledge

First, multiple choice questions were used to measure recall of general information. Each participant answered six multiple choice questions about the content in the news item with three possible answers adjusted to the condition the participant was assigned to. For example, for plastic waste: ‘What eats microplastic before it ends up on our plates?’. Respondents could choose between the options ‘fish’, ‘plankton’ or ‘sea mammals’. For each correctly answered question, one point was given. Per participant, all correctly answered questions were added up, and a mean score was calculated. This resulted in the variable factual knowledge (M = 4.61, SD = 1.30; the maximum score obtained was 6).

Second, participants were asked to indicate on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = not agree at all, 7 = totally agree) to rate how informed they felt after seeing the news item using four statements (for example, After seeing the news broadcast… I am familiar with different standpoints on the cause of the topic of the news broadcast). This resulted in the variable perceived knowledge (Cronbach’s α = 0.87, M = 4.93, SD = 1.19).

Besides demographic questions asking for age and gender, the participants were asked to indicate their Educational level. This variable was measured using eight 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 4 above.

Analysis procedure

To test H1 a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted with positive emotions and negative emotions as dependent variables, and 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. RQ1 was analysed with two two-way ANCOVAs, one for each knowledge variable, in which news version (constructive versus nonconstructive) and story topic (plastic waste and housing market) were defined as between-subjects variables. In all analyses, age, gender, and educational level were included as covariates. To investigate RQ2, we used Hayes’ PROCESS macro for mediation models (Hayes, 2022). Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and bootstrapping (5000 bootstrap samples, 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals (CIs)) were used to estimate the effects of type of news reporting via emotions on factual and perceived knowledge.

Results

Effects of news reporting style on emotions

The first hypothesis predicted that constructive news reporting would lead to higher levels of positive (H1a) and lower levels of negative (H1b) emotional responses among participants than nonconstructive news reporting. The analysis showed that the levels of positive emotions were indeed significantly higher for participants who saw a constructive news report, compared to those who saw a nonconstructive news report, F(1, 567) = 185.3, p < .001, η²_p = 0.25. Moreover, constructive news reporting reduced the impact of the stories on participants’ negative emotions, F(1, 567) = 84.5, p < .001, η²_p = 0.13. Participants who saw a constructive news broadcast reported significantly lower levels of negative emotions, compared with those who saw a nonconstructive broadcast, see Figure 1. Thus, the main effects of constructive compared to nonconstructive news reporting on emotions supported both hypotheses 1a and 1b.

Figure 1.

Mean scores (and standard deviation) for positive and negative emotions for each news version.

The analysis also revealed a main effect of story topic: The broadcast on plastic waste had more impact on both the positive (F(1, 567) = 28.3, p < .001, η²_p = 0.13) and negative (F(1, 567) = 56.4, p < .001, η²_p = 0.090) emotions of participants than the story about the housing market, see Figure 2. There were no interaction effects between news version and story topic.

Figure 2.

Mean scores (and standard deviation) for positive and negative emotions for the broadcast on plastic waste and the broadcast on the housing market. Effects of news reporting style on knowledge.

The first research question – asking about the differences between participants exposed to a constructive versus a nonconstructive style of news reporting in factual and perceived knowledge of news – was first tested for the variable factual knowledge. Results revealed that participants who watched the constructive news remembered slightly less of the factual information (M = 4.51, SD = 1.30) than participants who watched the nonconstructive news (M = 4.72, SD = 1.29), F(1, 567) = 4.01, p = .046, η²_p = .007. Furthermore, a significant main effect for story topic showed higher factual knowledge scores for participants who saw an item on the housing market (M = 5.03, SD = 1.21) than those who saw an item on plastic waste (M = 4.21, SD = 1.26), F(1, 567) = 66.0, p < .001, η²_p = .104. These main effects were qualified by a significant interaction between news version and story topic, F(1, 567) = 17.707, p < .001, η²_p = .030. Participants who watched the nonconstructive news item on the housing market had higher factual knowledge scores than those who watched the constructive version. Participants who saw the news item on plastic waste had equally high factual knowledge scores, irrespective whether they watched a constructive or nonconstructive version of the news story, see Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Mean scores (and standard deviation) for factual knowledge for each news version.

In addition, we analysed the influence of news version on perceived knowledge. The analysis yielded a main effect for story topic only, F(1, 567) = 6.323, p = .012, η²_p = .011. Participants who watched the news on plastic waste reported higher perceived knowledge scores (M = 5.05, SD = 1.17) than participants who saw the news item about the housing market (M = 4.81, SD = 1.20). The results for both factual and perceived knowledge imply that scores were largely dependent on the topic of the news broadcast.

The mediating effect of emotions

RQ2 questioned whether emotions elicited by either constructive or nonconstructive news reporting mediated the relation between style of reporting and factual and perceived knowledge. Given the importance of the news topic in the results of the analyses of research question 1, we analysed the mediating role of emotions for each news topic separately.

For factual knowledge on plastic waste, there was no significant mediating effect of either positive (b = 0.014, CI [-0.154, 0.176]), or negative (b = -0.018, CI [-0.127, 0.085]) emotions on factual knowledge. For factual knowledge on the housing market, there was a significant mediating effect of negative emotions (b = 0.136, CI [0.011, 0.275]), showing that as negative emotions increase, factual knowledge scores also increase on the same topic. The indirect effect of constructive versus nonconstructive news reporting via positive emotions (b = -0.133, CI [-0.301, 0.039]) was not significant.

Regarding perceived knowledge on plastic waste, a mediating effect of both positive (b = 0.390, CI [0.197, 0.590]) and negative (b = -0.244, CI [-0.402, -0.123]) emotions was found. The results indicate that as positive emotions increase, perceived knowledge scores increase, and when levels of negative emotions increase, perceived knowledge scores decrease. Thus, the better a participant felt, the higher his or her perceived knowledge scores.

For perceived knowledge on the housing market, there was a significant mediating effect of positive emotions only (b = .153, CI [0.003, 0.322]), showing that an increase of positive emotions led to an increase of perceived knowledge scores. The indirect effect of constructive versus nonconstructive news reporting via negative emotions (b = 0.014, CI [-0.110, 0.144]) was not significant.

Similar to research question 1, the results for research question 2 for both factual and perceived knowledge imply that scores are largely dependent on the topic of the news broadcast. For factual knowledge, the mediating role of negative emotions is present only in the broadcast on the housing market, showing that more negative feelings lead to higher factual knowledge scores. For perceived knowledge, the mediating role of emotions show that for both the broadcast on plastic waste and the housing market, the better participants feel, the higher their perceived knowledge scores are.

Discussion

One of the goals of constructive reporting is to present an accurate and complete account of what is happening in the world so that people are informed in a way that they can make well substantiated decisions in their lives which can benefit society. The aim of this study was to gain more insight in the way people process such information when watching constructive news.

Our findings show that participants who watched constructive television news feel more positive and less negative than participants who watched nonconstructive news. This is in line with earlier results found for print news (Baden et al., 2019; Hermans & Prins, 2020; McIntyre, 2015, 2019; McIntyre and Sobel, 2017; Meier, 2018). These findings therefore add to the growing evidence that people benefit from constructive news by making them feel more inspired, hopeful, and positive, and less powerless and negative. Our study shows evidence that this is not only the case for print, but also for audiovisual productions such as television news (Kleemans et al., 2019, 2017; Rusch et al., 2021).

The effects of constructive news on factual knowledge show a less clear picture, which is in line with different theories on information processing (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004; Lang, 2000) that did not show one clear pattern. This study showed that participants who saw nonconstructive television news recalled more factual information than those who saw constructive television news, but this effect could completely be assigned to the participants who saw the broadcast on the housing market. Differences in factual knowledge between constructive and nonconstructive news were not found for participants who saw the broadcast on the topic of plastic waste. These results imply that factual knowledge seems to be largely dependent on the topic of the news broadcast. The same holds for perceived knowledge: Participants who watched the news on plastic waste reported higher perceived knowledge scores than participants who saw the news item about the housing market. The topic of the news broadcast thus affected how informed participants felt.

The importance of news topic while investigating the effects of constructive news reporting has earlier been emphasized by Hermans and Prins (2020) and McIntyre (2019). Constructive news might be more impactful to news users who find a topic relevant to their own lives. This impact might not only be existing in their emotions, but also be present in the factual and perceived knowledge of news users. The present study represents a first attempt to address the importance of topic by including two different story topics in the study. However, it turned out to be rather difficult to create a constructive and a nonconstructive news version of two different topics that still remained fully comparable. In this study we used somewhat different formats to present both topics. As a result, findings of the current study might be partly due to the study design. We feel that further research should try to complement the findings of the current study, thereby addressing the importance of news topic and considering factors as news appeal, topic interest and prior knowledge about the topic as possible factors of influence.

The current study showed that constructive reporting elicited lower levels of negative emotions and higher levels of positive emotions compared to nonconstructive news. Moreover, we found an indirect effect of constructive versus nonconstructive news reporting via negative emotions on the outcome of factual knowledge: More negative feelings led to more factual knowledge of the housing market. At least for this topic, it seems that a more negative message might have stimulated automatic processing and thereby the recall of factual information (Lang, 2000). However, it could be possible that these negative emotions stimulate information processing to a certain extent, but might actually block processing abilities when these negative emotions rise to a higher level. Brosius (1993) identified a similar pattern and further research could explore these thoughts.

For perceived knowledge, we found the opposite mediation effect of emotions for both news items on the housing market and plastic waste: The more positive participants felt, the better informed they felt. This seems more in line with the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004) which states that positive emotions have a positive effect on a broadened mindset to be open to new information. Taken together, our findings again emphasize the importance of news topic. Moreover, they indicate that there seems to be a distinction between factual knowledge and perceived knowledge and the effect that constructive news has on either of those.

These findings are relevant to both researchers and journalists. As research methods for measuring recall have been discussed for a long time (Findahl and Höijer, 1985), the addition and contrasting findings of perceived knowledge are an interesting extension. In a time where a good relationship with the audience is emphasized as very important, it is interesting for journalists to think about the goal of their productions. Journalists can inform people and give them factual knowledge about a problem. Additionally, they can consider whether it is also important to leave the audience with a feeling of being well-informed about all aspects of that same issue. The latter might lead to more empowerment and a more pro-active attitude of the audience in society. In terms of future research, it would be useful to extend the current findings by examining whether the effect of constructive news on factual and perceived knowledge holds.

To conclude, the fact that constructive news reporting differentially affected participants’ factual and perceived knowledge of news compared to nonconstructive news reporting opens doors for follow-up investigations. Given the importance of both positive and negative emotions in information processing, they should be taken into account in future research and journalistic productions. The challenge for future research and journalism is to balance constructive news elements in news reporting and think about the aim of a production, in order to optimize the information processing of the audience, therewith contributing to a well-informed society that can make substantiated decisions in their lives.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and suggestions.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

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

ORCID iD

Tineke Prins

Author biographies

Nadia Swijtink is a researcher at the Media Research Centre, University of Applied Sciences Windesheim in Zwolle, the Netherlands. Her research mainly focuses on the effects of constructive news reporting on the public. She is also a teacher of journalism studies at the department of 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 news reporting on news users.

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.

Niek Hietbrink is researcher of constructive journalism at the Media Research Centre of Windesheim in Zwolle. His research mainly focuses on the role of media in the democratic debate. He is also a teacher of journalism studies at the department of journalism.

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