Constructive Journalism: An answer to the negativity of the news? : A focus group study on the view on and the effects of constructive journalism in a European setting

Abstract: News journalism often focuses on the negative (McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2017). This negativity can lead to citizens stop reading the news or becoming less engaged with the problems journalists report about. Following previous research conducted by McIntyre & Sobel (2017) and McIntyre & Gyldensted (2017), I investigated if constructive journalism can be an answer to this problem. In order to find an answer to this question an exploratory study was conducted through four focus groups all existing out of students in the age of 19-26 studying in Sweden at the moment of this study. Two news articles that reported on the current problem of climate change were discussed. My aim was to find out what this particular groups’ view was on news journalism in general and on constructive journalism in particular and if they felt more motivated to do something about climate change after reading the constructive news article. I conducted a qualitative content analysis of the transcripts of the focus groups to come to the findings. The results show that the participants prefer reading the article based on the principles of constructive journalism and that they want to do more about climate change after reading it. They feel that a negative article makes more impact though and therefore could be better for creating awareness for the problem. One important finding of this study is the fact that the participants do not see it solely as the responsibility of the journalists that readers come in contact with negative news so much.