How Does the Audience Respond to Constructive Journalism?

Abstract

The various practices of constructive journalism have the common objective to achieve certain effects on the audience: on the micro-level, the users’ information and emotion, on the meso-level the loyalty towards a media company, and on the macro-level the progress of society. Taking a holistic definition of constructive journalism as a basis, the two experiments discussed in this article examined the audience responses to German-language news and features presented to readers and radio listeners in both constructive and non-constructive versions. The results are multifaceted. On the micro-level, constructive forms can counteract a negative view of the world because the audience recognises a solution-orientation and underlying spirit of hope. The increased willingness to share constructive stories indicates, on the macro-level, that constructive reporting can raise the perception of possible solutions and role models and hence encourage engagement and emulation. But the hopeful prospects should not be used to simply garnish a difficult problem at any price and maintaining a distance from positive examples is advisable—otherwise, the constructive story runs the risk of being perceived as a commercial or political influence.

KEYWORDS:

• audience
• constructive journalism
• engagement
• experiment
• feature
• news
• radio journalism

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The study of the “Sächsische Zeitung” (SZ) has not been published and is intended exclusively for internal use. The author has at his disposal the central results; in addition, they were discussed with Oliver Reinhard, deputy head of the features desk and initiator of the SZ “Good to know” series, in a telephone interview with the author on 6 July 2017.

2 The basic experiment was developed, carried out and evaluated in a project in a journalism master’s degree programme, with focus on innovation and management, at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. I wish to thank the following students for their active participation: Stefanie Dürr, Mariam Fall, Bruno Fritzsche, Michael Graßl, Tamara Grum, Tanja Harrer, Benjamin Heckner, Daniela Märkl, Brigitte Mellert, Maria Lisa Schiavone, Oktavia Skorupa, Bernadette Uth and Huan Wang.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Klaus Meier

School of Journalism, Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany. Web: www.journalistik-eichstaett.de and www.klaus-meier.net/information-in-english.