Dr. Ruth Palmer
Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media at IE University in Madrid, Spain. Her research explores how non-journalists relate to the news media.
X / Twitter: @ruthiepalmer
Email: rpalmer@faculty.ie.edu
Prof. Stephanie Edgerly
Professor at Northwestern University and Associate Dean of Research for the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
X / Twitter: @StephEdgerly
Email: stephanie.edgerly@northwestern.edu
Prof. Emily Vraga
Don and Carole Larson Professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.
Bluesky: @ekvraga.bksy.social
Email: ekvraga@umn.edu
U.S. Election 2024
51. The powers that aren’t: News organizations and the 2024 election (Dr Nik Usher)
52. Newspaper presidential endorsements: Silence during consequential moment in history (Dr Kenneth Campbell)
53. Trump after news: a moral voice in an empty room? (Prof Matt Carlson, Prof Sue Robinson, Prof Seth C. Lewis)
54. Under media oligarchy: profit and power trumped democracy once again (Prof Victor Pickard)
55. The challenge of pro-democracy journalism (Prof Stephen D. Reese)
56. Grievance and animosity: Fracturing the digital news ecosystem (Dr Scott A. Eldridge II)
57. Considering the risk of attacks on journalists during the U.S. election (Dr Valerie Belair-Gagnon)
58. What can sentiment in cable news coverage tell us about the 2024 campaign? (Dr Gavin Ploger, Dr Stuart Soroka)
59. The case for happy election news: Why it matters and what stands in the way (Dr Ruth Palmer, Prof Stephanie Edgerly, Prof Emily K. Vraga)
60. Broadcast television use and the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Jessica Maki, Prof Michael W. Wagner)
61. Kamala Harris' representation in mainstream and Black media (Dr Miya Williams Fayne, Prof Danielle K. Brown)
62. Team Trump and the altercation at the Arlington military cemetery (Dr Natalie Jester)
63. Pulling their punches: On the limits of sports metaphor in political media (Prof Michael L. Butterworth)
The election is over. For some, it is a time of rejoicing. For others, anger. And for yet others, a time of confusion or sadness. For partisans on both sides, however, the weeks and months leading up to the election brought an exhausting mix of anxiety-inducing ups and downs from the election coverage. For everyone else, it was disgust at how negative it all seemed. In this moment, we must try to imagine how news coverage of presidential campaigns could be more uplifting and potentially help us find common ground.
We are not suggesting that it should all be puppies and ice cream. It may well be that a certain amount of negative coverage is necessary to keep people feeling interested and motivated or to reflect realities about the world or the campaigns’ messages. But perhaps a sprinkling of more positive, less polarizing stories would help stave off despair while still maintaining interest.
News avoidance, often linked to feelings that news is too depressing, has skyrocketed in recent years. News organizations around the world are now experimenting with various ways to combat news-is-too-negative perceptions, from solutions journalism, to good-news newsletters, to happy podcasts. And yet, as researchers studying positive news, we found in recent months that these initiatives almost always excluded election news altogether.
Which is concerning because that is where they arguably matter most. Positive emotions are not trivial in the political arena. They broaden our perspectives and help us build the resources necessary to take action. If election coverage is so relentlessly negative people turn away from it completely, get too depressed to act, or feel so traumatized by the whole process they have few emotional reserves to recover from the result and fight for change, we have a problem.
That said, it makes sense that these happy news projects have largely steered clear of the election. It is hard to imagine uplifting campaign coverage that does not alienate opposing partisans or people who do not like politics to begin with. For partisan news lovers, good news is any inside baseball or horse race coverage that shows their preferred athlete is winning. But the same news makes the other side despair. “Trump ahead in polls in 3 swing states,” is great news for strong Republicans, but excruciating for strong Democrats, for whom the exact opposite headline would constitute good news.
Meanwhile, for people who are not strongly committed to either party, this probably all just looks like crowing, and gloating, and arguing—more of what turns them off news and politics to begin with. There are few, if any, stories that all three of these groups—strong partisans on both sides and nonpartisans alike—would agree are “good” news.
This struck us recently because in preparation to field an experiment on positivity in news we had to collect happy news headlines. Granted, we were working a month before election day, but we found it all but impossible to find any election stories in major mainstream news outlets that most people across the political spectrum would agree were positive.
So, we ended up excluding election stories altogether. Instead, we asked a sample of 623 American adults to rate 6 non-political news headlines for positive/negative valence, importance, and interest. Although the headlines were not about the election, the results offer some suggestions about what more uplifting, non-polarizing election coverage could look like.
News has a long-established negativity bias, so we were not surprised that respondents tended to rank negative headlines significantly higher on importance and “news-ness” than positive headlines. But they still ranked positive headlines as more important than not, and they found them equally as interesting as the more negative headlines.
And there were clear patterns among the types of headlines respondents considered almost universally positive: acts of altruism, medical or scientific breakthroughs that stood to benefit many people, and positive national economic trends. Notably, these stories were almost always stories about common citizens, including children, as opposed to the power elite. And animals. Lots of animals.
What might this suggest about potentially positive, nonpartisan election coverage? We have to be creative here, because these kinds of stories are rare, when they occur at all. The focus should be on citizens, as opposed to candidates and other politicians, and not on whom they plan to vote for, but rather on participating, and especially helping others participate. The goal should be to inspire, or even just to have fun. People helping others get to the polls, or children raising money for an animal shelter by selling lemonade to voters waiting in line. A technological innovation that facilitates participation. The town with the highest voter turnout in the country. Service animals assisting voters. The history of campaign paraphernalia. Voters who persevere to make it to the polls despite various obstacles. Poll workers who fall in love.
Of course, even these stories may seem partisan to the most ideologically extreme among us. But emphasis on American identity has been found to mitigate affective polarization, and there is little more American than voting itself. And again, we are not suggesting these stories supplant coverage of candidates and policies altogether, only that these cohabitate. Give us all a little more hope, and a reminder of shared humanity, rather than a relentless drumbeat of division.