Are ‘Sensational’ News Stories More Likely to Trigger Viewers’ Emotions than Non-Sensational News Stories? A Content Analysis of British TV News  

Oleh:

Uribe, Rodrigo ; Gunter, Barrie

Jenis: Article from Article
Dalam koleksi: European Journal of Communication vol. 22 no. 2 (2010), page 207-228.
Topik: Content Analysis; Emotionality; Sensationalism; Tabloidization; Television News
Fulltext: 207.full.pdf (267.43KB)

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This article considers whether ‘sensational’ news stories are intrinsically more likely to elicit emotional responses in audiences than other TV news stories. The research analyses a sample of British televised news in respect of empirically validated attributes, to identify the presence of particular content elements that audience research has shown to possess emotion-eliciting capabilities. The results show that news stories traditionally classified as ‘sensational’ – a term that implies a dramatic and therefore emotion-arousing imperative – do not necessarily contain more emotionally arousing features than other types of news story. Only crime stories (among the most frequently occurring ‘sensational’ news categories) and, to a limited extent, political stories (a classic ‘non-sensational’ news topic) provide clear manifestations of the presence of high and low emotion-laden attributes. Moreover, those topics containing more emotion-laden material are not the same over time or across public and commercial TV channels.

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