https://reasonstobecheerful.world/solutions-journalism-growing-impact/
"When Karen McIntyre began her PhD at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill in 2012, she had never heard of solutions journalism. But one day a
professor asked her to compile a list of “positive news” websites for a media
research project.
“What I initially found was not solutions journalism at all,” says McIntyre.
“It was good news journalism. Happy news. ‘Fireman saves cat’ kind of news.”
But later, while carrying out that research McIntyre came across the idea of
“serious news done in a constructive way” — and her curiosity spiked. For her,
it was the polar opposite of the media industry’s status quo: rather than
agonizing superficially over the negatives of the day, this was about
scrutinizing how and why things went right.
“It was a breath of fresh air,” says McIntyre, who then channeled her energies
into finding out as much about this nascent practice as she could.
But there was little out there. In fact, she could find no academic research
about the field at all. So in 2015, McIntyre published her dissertation
analyzing the positive psychological effects of “constructive journalism” and
“solution information” on the readers of news stories — to her knowledge, the
first scientific research of its kind.
“These days there’s so much more research out there,” adds McIntyre, who is now
an associate professor of journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University. (A
list compiled by her colleague Kyser Lough contains 246 pieces of research to
date.)
Ever since its beginnings, the journalism industry has sought to change society
for the better and pick apart the merits and pitfalls of policies and projects
around the world. Yet a fast-expanding movement is transforming the industry by
promoting an approach to journalism centered on assessing responses to
society’s problems – from the climate emergency to plastic waste, gender
inequality and cultural division."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
