The effects of solutions versus ‘heart-warmer’ journalism on audience wellbeing, self-efficacy, and trust

Natasha Van Antwerpen & Kyser Lough. “The effects of solutions versus ‘heart-warmer’ journalism on audience wellbeing, self-efficacy, and trust,” paper accepted for presentation to the Journalism Studies division at the International Communication Association 2024 conference, Gold Coast.

Abstract: While solutions journalism, rigorous reporting on responses to social problems, has separated itself from lighter and inspirational ‘heart-warming’ news, studies have yet to test how the approaches differ on audience responses. Rather, existing studies on key outcomes such as positive emotion and wellbeing, efficacy and trust in news primarily test solutions journalism against problem-oriented reporting. Accordingly, we ran a between-participants repeated-measures experiment among young higher-education students (N = 283) in Australia and the United States. Participants read three articles on relevant university-related topics in solutions-oriented or ‘heart-warming’ story conditions. Compared to participants in the solutions journalism condition, participants in the heart-warming condition reported higher eudaimonic (meaning-related) and hedonic (pleasure-related) wellbeing, though solutions stories were identified as more evidently addressing a structural issue. There was no difference across conditions in effects across self- or community-efficacy, or on trust in news. As positive emotion is currently the only consistent finding in the solutions journalism audience-effects literature, our study points to the importance of testing solutions journalism against heart-warming as well as negative/prototypical news, and considering more nuanced definitions of wellbeing than positive and negative emotion alone.