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.