Media, Audience And Negative News

News has acted as the primary source of information about the world for a large number of people since the Acta Diurna started in 59 BCE in ancient Rome. Over time, the term has expanded its meaning to signify changes or happenings in political, geographical, economic or social scenarios of a society. In the present day, which presents a complex interconnected society with occurrences happening everywhere, there is more news than ever, which means that people have access to information about events anywhere in the world but also means that people are exposed to news about events that can be depressing or negative. 

News with elements of negativity impacts the reader negatively. When the news concerns the reader personally and the reported event or occurrence impacts their lives, the degree of negative effect created in the reader increases. Scientific studies state the importance of personal relevance to the news in the appraisal of the news as positive or negative by an individual. Research by Trussler and Soroka in 2014 shows that audiences subconsciously are more likely to consume negative news regardless of their conscious preference for positive news. 

Premise 

Having established the premise that people are more susceptible to and are more affected by negative news, it is now apt to inquire whether the media is responsible for the proliferation of negative news or whether the audiences are the ones responsible for their consumption of negative news.  As social creatures, human beings are mainly affected by emotions in their day-to-day life. Most of the decisions taken by human beings daily are in some form influenced by their state of emotion that not only affects the present moment but also their future decisions. Negative dominance plays an important role in the experience of emotions.

When positive and negative events are combined, humans tend to attribute more emotional significance to negative aspects. This is parallel to negativity bias, a cognitive bias which refers to the tendency to pay more attention to negative information than to positive information. Negativity bias plays an important role in the choice of news by individuals. From an evolutionary perspective, negativity bias emerges from a conditioned tendency to recognise dangers in their environment. It helps individuals to counter the perils and guarantee their survival. 

Although today mortal dangers are far and few in between, human beings are still inclined towards searching for danger, and this occurs in the form of a choice or attraction towards negative news. Researchers also point towards the “novelty value” of information. While all positive news might seem the same, negative news can seem wildly different from other negative news and thus attract the attention of a reader. This can lead readers to prefer news that is high in novelty value, i.e., negative news. Because of this, such news is better remembered and carries greater weight in people's minds compared to positive news. 

Readers have been evolutionarily and psychologically wired to be attentive to dangers and negative news; the media has to play a role in limiting the proliferation of negative news. There is a direct relationship between media coverage of events and public opinion about them. How the media portrays an event plays an important role in determining the nature of how it is perceived by the public. Furthermore, the events that the media chooses to give priority to become the events that are considered more important by everyone else. As such, the media carries the responsibility of determining the public opinion and also the public perception of current issues. 

The responsibility of framing news in a certain manner not only lies in individual journalists but also in media entities such as TV channels, newspaper companies and social media. Noam Chomsky, in his seminal work Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, outlined the manner through which media institutions as a whole act towards propagating certain ideas and influence public perception. The book outlines five reasons for this: ownership concentration, advertising dependency, sourcing bias, flak and reinforcement and ideological framework. 

Biased sources 

In a society where the means of information are privately controlled and are owned by a select group of individuals, those owners have the power to determine the news that their media chooses to cover. So, as the source of information cannot be said to be free of bias and control, the audience cannot be held responsible for their inclination towards negative news. 

While psychology plays an important role in the audience’s preference for news, they do not fully control the news that they read, listen and view. Here, there is a need for caution from the side of the media in the presentation of news. Although the audience can force themselves to direct their attention towards positive news, the media is responsible for the portrayal of news. Hence, both the media and readers/viewers are responsible for the popularity of negative news. 

(Chaulagain is a psychology student at St. Xavier's College, Maitighar.)