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6 - Reactions to News Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Stuart N. Soroka
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
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Summary

Sakit nang kalingkingan nararamdaman ng buong katawan. [Illness or pain in a small part (finger) is felt by the whole body.]

– Tagalog Proverb

The previous chapter demonstrated a negativity bias in media content. It also argued that the negativity bias is a product of our tendency to be more attracted to negative news – or, put more forcefully, it is a product of humans being hardwired to react more to negative than to positive information. This chapter explores this possibility further through two tests of our reactions to news content.

The tests take two (quite different) forms. First, I analyze data on newsstand magazine sales, weekly, over the past two decades, using sales data made available by Maclean's magazine in Canada. These data are matched to human-coded covers for every issue. Controlling for seasonal variation in magazine sales, as well as the subject matter of cover stories, the tone of cover stories/pictures appears to matter to newsstand sales: predictably, negative covers sell more than positive ones. This is taken as a first, aggregate-level indication that humans (or at least the media-consuming public) are indeed more interested in negative news content than in positive one.

Type
Chapter
Information
Negativity in Democratic Politics
Causes and Consequences
, pp. 95 - 107
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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  • Reactions to News Content
  • Stuart N. Soroka, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: Negativity in Democratic Politics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107477971.007
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  • Reactions to News Content
  • Stuart N. Soroka, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: Negativity in Democratic Politics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107477971.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Reactions to News Content
  • Stuart N. Soroka, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book: Negativity in Democratic Politics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107477971.007
Available formats
×