Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Negativity drives online news consumption

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 375 posts

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#111

Post by warner25 »

KoftaBob wrote: post #83
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely actionable or relevant for the average viewer. It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than curre…

I've moved towards this too, for better or worse. Between 18-25, I was very passionate about national politics and macroeconomics and consumed by following political news and fiery debates, as many young people are. As my adult responsibilities grew, I realized that the national political stuff was either irrelevant to my day-to-day life experience and / or not something that I could affect much (not actionable, as you said), and the return-on-investment of my time and attention on more immediate things was much higher. In my 30s now, I almost exclusively read and listen to things closely related to my own work and family finances and health. I guess there's a downside of political disengagement for society, though. Old people seem to become more engaged again when they have more free time, but maybe we end up with this donut hole of representation among people who are in the middle of working full-time and raising kids.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#112

Post by nottathrowaway3 »

rightbyte wrote: post #104
themitigating wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a farewell video of a very far right person dying of Covid. He didn't get vaccinated but I don't know if it was because he was anti-vax, didn't think Covid was real or didn't get a chance as this was early in the pandemic. It was a recording made from a hospital bed and uploaded to Facebook. As he was saying his goodbyes he said something like "...and tell Brandon (son) I love him, not to trust anyone, and…

> "and no one will ever help you in life" Strange thing to say in a hospital bed? Also, if the doctors know you are dying of Covid you can hardly talk right? Seems fishy.

> "and no one will ever help you in life" ... strange thing to say in a hospital bed?

It's strange until you get the hospital bill in the mail.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#113

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

If it bleeds it leads

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#115

Post by jader201 »

milsorgen wrote: post #17
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

It makes sense at a surface level, if you ignore negative information it could potentially lead to negative outcomes for yourself. If you ignore positive news, what's the worst that could happen if you're caught unawares? Something positive or at least personally benign?

I this this is a fair point. I would argue, though, that 99% of the negative news (or most news, for that matter) will have zero effect on 99% of the population (e.g. focusing on individual crimes vs. aggregate crimes or a systemic crime problem).

In an ideal world, news outlets aren't pushing news that is shocking for the sake of being shocking (and therefore, increasing viewership/readership), but pushing news that is actually relevant to a good percentage of their viewers.

Sure, report things like severe weather forecasts, boil water advisories, etc.

But I don't need to know about every crime, or every scandal in Hollywood, etc. -- and this is most of the negative information that's covered. Not the things that are genuinely relevant to most of us.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#116

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

ilamont wrote: post #81

A tale that predates the "yellow journalism" movement. One of my favorite anecdotes about Ben Franklin (via the Isaacson biography) was his tendency to deliberately gin up stories or controversy in his publications, using fake letters to the editor and other tricks. This was in the mid 1700s. TV news has the same problem. After the Eagles broke up, drummer Don Henley nailed it with one of his first solo hits, Dirty L…

There's a podcast called "The Past Times!" where two comedians just read a newspaper from 200 years ago. They're insane.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#117

Post by silisili »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

Is it possible it's a scale/impact issue? I tried subscribing to good news, and most of it seemed...just not newsworthy. Small happenings?

But large notable news probably still drives clicks, yeah? The moon landing was the most watched program in history, after all.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#118

Post by Frost1x »

bachmeier wrote: post #89
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

This is in no way an attack on you, but your post shows exactly the problem. You first wrote > With few exceptions, positive stories and then you wrote > a whole section for feel-good features "Positive news" is more or less orthogonal to "feel-good features". When I moved to my current job, I had the option of watching Kansas City news or Topeka news. The KC news stations took the route you're suggesting. Everything…

I've noticed some programming and sources have sort of jammed feel-good pieces in some weird attempt to counter balance things. People dying on Ukraine, banks defaulting, Little Timmy in nowhere USA is taking steps to setup his lemonade stand and donate to the local food shelter to make a difference.

Don't get me wrong, I think efforts like Little Timmy's are great and in the scope of their lives is probably significant. It doesn't however hit the level of magnitude/significance and scope of their negative counter parts. It's only in local news sources that I tend to see a better balance of things that truly effect, are relevant to me, and aren't full of doom and gloom.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#119

Post by nonethewiser »

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

If the news is inherently skewed towards negativity then maybe it's not as valuable as we assume it is.

This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought experiment.

To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it shouldn't be revered as much as it is (by my estimation). I think people tend to think that news is sacred - more is better and it should face no challenges to its existence. But I also think we find ourselves in a predicament that we don't associate with times where news consisted of a daily paper and perhaps the radio. I'm not sure those times were any less prone to bias an negativity. The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less news.

I'm not really sure what sort of attitude change or direction this would dictate. Like I said, it would be terrible for the government to limit news, and this negativity exists because there is strong demand for it. I guess I think people just shouldn't watch the news much, with some exception. I mean if you look at cable for example, it's virtually all garbage.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#120

Post by Karrot_Kream »

warner25 wrote: post #111
KoftaBob wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely actionable or relevant for the average viewer. It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than curre…

I've moved towards this too, for better or worse. Between 18-25, I was very passionate about national politics and macroeconomics and consumed by following political news and fiery debates, as many young people are. As my adult responsibilities grew, I realized that the national political stuff was either irrelevant to my day-to-day life experience and / or not something that I could affect much (not actionable, as y…

Do these fiery debates help? I say as someone who also was like this in my late teens.

I do local advocacy for transit and civic planning related purposes in a US city. A lot of the "work" is really boring, just going to long public meetings and listening to SMEs drone about very specific issues. But that's where the sausage gets made. Our local transportation department is very receptive to the public's urban concerns and is doing a lot of great work. But they're blocked right now. Not just because their funding is uncertain or due to cranky old neighbors, but mostly because they have staff shortages as Baby Boomers retire. There's nothing we activists can do about this, we can't campaign for a measure or bill that puts butts into seats.

If you go to Youtube or online North American urbanist forums though, folks aren't interested in these local issues at all. A lot of it is raving and ranting about how the US puts cars first and hates its people. This is fun to get emotional about (and believe me I've had enough close run-ins with cars as a pedestrian or cyclist to feel the rage) but doesn't actually materially affect our local urban conditions. But it's a lot less fun to talk about budget appropriation and staffing politics and much more fun to get angry at the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, so nobody does.

I'm not saying these topics aren't important; if you're new to the issue it's important to understand why North American built environments are the way they are. But what's more important is working to change the reality around you, not getting wrapped up in online debates.

Post reply on HN