The Influence of Constructive Journalism on News Avoidance and Long-Term News Consumption Intentions

Abstract

As news avoidance becomes more common, it has posed a major problem for digital journalism, which is concerned with falling audience participation and news consumption. Constructive journalism has been suggested as a type of reporting that blends fact with context and solutions, but there is not yet empirical evidence about the impact of constructive journalism on audience behavioral outcomes. Based on this, this study analyzed the results of a randomized controlled experiment to see how constructive journalism influences news avoidance and future news consumption intentions. Overall, 400 regular digital news users were randomly assigned to read a constructive or conventional version of a news article, and then completed a structured post-exposure questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze collected data along with independent-samples t-test. The results showed that participants who were exposed to CJ expressed higher scores in terms of news avoidance and more positive intentions to continue reading digital news than conventional journalism. The results of this study offer empirical proof of the positive effect that solution-oriented news framing can have on the engagement of audiences, as it helps to decrease news avoidance and increase the audience's tendency to consume more digital news. The research makes an important contribution to journalism and communication studies by adding to the experimental evidence on constructive journalism, and it has practical implications for news media that want to enhance their long-term audience connection by balancing problem-and-solution journalism.