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Are `Sensational' News Stories More Likely to Trigger Viewers' Emotions than Non-Sensational News Stories?: A Content Analysis of British TV News
Rodrigo Uribe and Barrie Gunter European Journal of Communication 2007 22: 207 DOI: 10.1177/0267323107076770 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ejc.sagepub.com/content/22/2/207

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Are Sensational News Stories More Likely to Trigger Viewers Emotions than Non-Sensational News Stories?
A Content Analysis of British TV News Rodrigo Uribe and Barrie Gunter

A B S T R A C T

This article considers whether sensational news stories are intrinsically more likely to elicit emotional responses in audiences than other TV news stories. The research analyses a sample of British televised news in respect of empirically validated attributes, to identify the presence of particular content elements that audience research has shown to possess emotion-eliciting capabilities. The results show that news stories traditionally classified as sensational a term that implies a dramatic and therefore emotion-arousing imperative do not necessarily contain more emotionally arousing features than other types of news story. Only crime stories (among the most frequently occurring sensational news categories) and, to a limited extent, political stories (a classic non-sensational news topic) provide clear manifestations of the presence of high and low emotion-laden attributes. Moreover, those topics containing more emotion-laden material are not the same over time or across public and commercial TV channels. Key Words content analysis, emotionality, sensationalism, tabloidization, television news

Rodrigo Uribe is assistant professor at the School of Business, The University of Chile, Diagonal Paraguay 257, Of. 1104, Santiago, Chile [email: ruribe@unegocios.cl]. Barrie Gunter is Professor of Mass Communication and head of the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK. [email: bg45@le.ac.uk] European Journal of Communication Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) www.sagepublications.com, Vol 22(2): 207228. [10.1177/0267323107076770]

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Introduction In the debate about new trends in the field of information provision, issues such as the growing presence of commercial media outlets, increasing media deregulation and the emergence of an anti-elitist populism have been directly associated with the development of a more consumer-orientated style of news packaging (Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999; Franklin, 1997). In this context, one recurrent observation is that in the attempt to produce more attractive i.e. entertainment-oriented stories, news items have become more sensational or tabloid-like over time1 (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; McManus, 1994; Grabe et al., 2001). Some writers have condemned this tendency since it compromises the civic role of journalism. The most recurrent argument has been that a more dramatized style of coverage undermines the role of the press to enlighten in democratic societies (Franklin, 1997; McManus, 1994). The achievement of entertainment objectives through the selection of sensational stories or production treatments may render the news more colourful but not necessarily more informative (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Franklin, 2005). On the other hand, other scholars have directly or indirectly defended the presence of more dramatic, entertaining and sensational styles of news coverage. Stevens (1985) proposed a social utility function of sensational news stories in terms of helping members of society to draw the line between what is (and what is not) morally acceptable. In a different vein, Hofstetter and Dozier (1986) have stated that more dramatic or sensational stories are not necessarily synonymous with low quality journalism. News items that play on the emotions of news consumers could nevertheless contain high quality elements such as rich background information and informed references to political processes (Costera Meijer, 2003). It has been argued that the development of entertaining journalism can produce a form of news that is more in tune with popular culture than the traditional approaches represented by the elite press (Fiske, 1992; Langer, 1998). Finally, other studies analysing audiences reactions to sensational news features have stressed the audience appeal and memorability of this type of coverage. Although these studies have not directly asserted that this style of news coverage is a positive feature per se, they have provided evidence of important links between entertaining and emotionally arousing forms of news provision and levels of audience engagement (Lang et al., 2003). In the context of this debate, a relevant issue is to determine what is meant by sensationalism and, more particularly, how best can its presence be measured in news story content (Sparks, 2000). Many scholars have agreed that sensationalism can be operationally defined as a content feature
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characterized by the power to stimulate media audiences senses (Slattery and Hakanen, 1994). Thus, sensational news is news that can trigger emotional reactions in audiences (Mott, 1962; Adams, 1978; Ryu, 1982). Another writer has stated that sensational news contains elements that arouse audiences emotions and empathy (Graber, 1994). More explicitly, Grabe et al. (2001) have asserted that sensationalism can be understood as the presence of news features that provoke emotional responses and physiological stimulation or arousal among the members of the audience. That is to say, across all these definitions sensationalism is seen as a characteristic of the newspackaging process that places emphasis upon those elements that could provoke an effect on the human sensory system. Based on these ideas, several content analyses have examined samples of news stories to investigate whether or not the presence of sensational elements in the news coverage is a pervasive aspect of news. In all these studies, the first task was to identify content themes that could potentially provoke emotional reactions in members of the audience (Mott, 1962). Operational definitions of sensationalism are principally built upon the idea that there are sensational topics such as crime, human interest or showbiz that contain more emotional or arousing power than non-sensational topics such as political or economic news (Adams, 1978; Ryu, 1982). Findings from both sides of the Atlantic have generated different conclusions about the incidence of these topics and, consequently, the presence of dramatic or sensational tendencies in news. In the US, studies have shown that the presence of a more entertainment-oriented news agenda, with stories that play on the sensational, has become significantly more prominent over time. Slattery and Hakanen (1994) reported that sensational stories increased from 11.6 percent to 40.6 percent in the period 197692, stressing that this shift could be seen against a significant decrease in governmental, political and public policy coverage (see also Grabe et al., 2001). In Europe, Barnett et al. (2000) reported a shift in UK TV newscasts towards a news agenda richer in crime, sports, royalty, showbiz, human interest and humour. However, they also noted that televised news contained a sufficient broadsheet agenda to maintain a healthy balance of serious, light and international coverage. This is particularly true in comparison to news bulletins in the United States, for example, or some European countries where highly commercialized channels produce news which is dominated by stories about crime, showbiz, trivia or human interest (Barnett et al., 2000: 12; see also Hargreaves and Thomas, 2002; Winston, 2002). One of the central problems with these studies is that sensationalism, as a news attribute, is usually understood as an intrinsic quality of
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specific news topics. Thus, crime news is deemed to be inherently dramatic and sensational, whereas economics is not. Presumptions are made that audiences will respond differently to news stories mainly by virtue of the topic category to which a story belongs. Where the notion of news as sensational is concerned, however, there is an implication that not only does it contain different qualities from that deemed to be non-sensational, but also that each type of news will engage audiences differently. The idea that sensational news delivers a different sensory response from other news implies that it can trigger emotions in audiences that may be experienced at a psychological or more visceral level (Lang, 1994). If sensational news is therefore also more emotive, then it is essential to understand the mechanisms of this response in order to determine whether the news really is changing (Tannenbaum and Lynch, 1963). If there is an increasing entertainment-oriented tendency, and one signifier of entertainment is that the news engages audiences emotions more readily, then it is important not only to examine content in terms of the main topic, but also to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced mode of analysis. This reasoning derives from empirical evidence that the emotional response of audiences to news is driven not just by content features but also by presentation style (Grabe et al., 2003; Tannenbaum and Lynch, 1960). Therefore, we argue that the emotion-eliciting qualities of content are not only bound by topic type, but also by specific linguistic features that cut across news topics. This opens up the possibility that even so-called serious (non-sensational) news topics such as politics and economics can be written in a more or less emotive fashion. Thus, one of the problems with traditional research conducted under the broad headings of sensationalism (or tabloidization) is that it fails to identify which specific news attributes are necessarily valid signifiers of this trend, where validity lies in the capability of those story attributes to trigger emotional responses in audiences (Grabe et al., 2001). As such, some scholars have suggested that much of this research does not pass the test of empirical referents because traditionally used categories are often included with little or no evidence that they can actually provoke emotional reactions in news consumers (Chaffee, 1991; Grabe et al., 2001). In this sense, coding elements that have empirical support from audience research are believed to provide a more ecologically robust evaluation of the changing qualities of news coverage (Hendriks Vettehen et al., 2005). Additionally, there are several other theoretical and empirical reasons to support the argument that the analysis of news themes alone does not account for all potential emotion-arousing qualities in the news. For example, Hargreaves and Thomas (2002) proposed that news agenda analysis
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based on topic cataloguing is a limited tool for the detection of changes in the use of emotion-laden and, in general, tabloid-like features in news stories. In interviews with British newsroom personnel, these authors found that broadcast journalists put particular emphasis on making boring news categories such as politics and public affairs more dramatic (see also Graber, 1994). In a similar vein, other scholars have observed that the presence of news coverage centred on scandal, drama and other sensational elements has significantly increased over time especially in the case of political news (Morris and Clawson, 2005). These findings imply that the emotional appeal of news is not exclusively grounded in the use of specific news themes, but is more closely related to subtle narrative and production elements within stories, regardless of their topic category. Moreover, assuming that news items can be considered rich informational stimuli (Gunter, 1987), additional doubts arise about the necessary association between thematic categories and the emotional reactions of the audience. Imagine a news report about a criminal. It could be verbally constructed with or without emotion-laden verbal and visual elements such as the dramatic reconstruction of the crime showing the suffering of a victim. Alternatively, the report could focus on abstract verbal information about the social determinants of crime with which audiences engage at a cognitive level but not at an emotional level (Brosius et al., 1996). Thus, regardless of the particular topic, news items can be packaged with or without emotion-laden information at both narrative and visual levels (see Crigler et al., 1994; Paivio, 1986). For these reasons, this article proposes that there are reasonable doubts at different levels of analysis about the suitability of topic-based classifications such as sensational/non-sensational (or tabloid/non-tabloid) in discussions about changing qualities of news and how audiences might respond emotionally to news coverage. It is possible to conceive that audiences could receive doses of emotionally arousing material whatever the news story topic they happen to be consuming. Thus, this study develops an empirical examination of the presence of emotion-laden content in news traditionally labelled as sensational. The central research question we ask is whether the prominence of those elements that can potentially trigger emotional reactions in audiences varies across traditional news topic types. The research reported in this article proposes that significant changes in the nature of news coverage may have occurred below the news topic level. Subtle shifts in the nature of news production treatments in televised news have been observed in the US at narrative and visual levels that represent increased use of emotionally arousing elements in story reporting (Grabe et al., 2001, 2003). Grabe and colleagues analysed the sensationalism of
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news in terms of the presence or absence of these features and the significance of the coded elements was reinforced by empirical research with audiences that confirmed their emotion-arousing properties. If news themes that are defined as sensational really do engage audiences more effectively at an emotional level, then they should display more emotion-eliciting properties. The key hypothesis under investigation here, therefore, is that news stories classified as sensational (because of their thematic nature) should contain more emotion-eliciting attributes (as empirically verified via audience research) than stories classed thematically as non-sensational. Method A content analysis was carried out on a sample of televised news coverage in which the coded attributes comprised elements that previous empirical research had shown to have emotion-eliciting characteristics for audiences. The presence of these elements was compared across news from different topic types. In previous research these various topic types have been classified as being typical of a tabloid or broadsheet news agenda or, despite no audience research verification, as sensational or non-sensational in nature.
Core definitions

Definition of sensational themes The topic-based classification used here was derived from research on news content carried out by McLachlan and Golding (2000). They divided news topics into agriculture, business, charities, crime, defence, diet/beauty/fashion, disaster/accident, drugs/alcohol, the economy, education, employment, culture/entertainment/showbiz, environment, equal rights, European Community, gambling, health, housing, human interest, justice system, local government, media, motors/cars, Northern Ireland, past events, parliamentary/political news, racing, religion, royal family, science, sex stories, social issues, social security, space, sport, transport, unions and other news. This list of themes was then reclassified into superordinate sensational and non-sensational news categories.2 According to the coding scheme provided by Ryu (1982) (which has also been used by Slattery et al. [2001] and Mott [1962]), the umbrella category of sensational news operationally included stories about sport, crime, the royal family,3 entertainment/showbiz and human interest. All the other topics are subsumed under the macro-category of non-sensational news stories. Classification of emotion-laden content features in TV news News material was also classified in terms of the presence of those emotion-eliciting content
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elements that had been empirically verified by previous audience research. These features were coded for all news topic types. Since our starting point is the idea that news defined as sensational contains features that can elicit an emotional response in viewers (Grabe et al., 2001), it is necessary to define what we mean by emotional response. Different types of emotional responses have been differentiated in the audience research literature. They can be organized in a continuum, running from mood (a persistent emotional state) to brief emotional reactions as transitory responses that can dissipate rapidly, though may through reinforcement develop into mood changes of a longer duration (Cacioppo and Gardner, 1999). In the present scheme, core elements include any that can elicit emotional reactions, whether positive or negative in valence. Guidance in the selection of indicators of emotional reactions was obtained from other empirical research on audience response to TV news content4 (Donohew et al., 1988; Zillmann, 1991). On the basis of those studies, a list of six content categories, which had also been incorporated into earlier content analysis research (Hendriks Vettehen et al., 2005; Grabe et al., 2001), was drawn up: Sex This is one of the most widely examined sources of emotional arousal in media content. The emotionally arousing nature of sexual material has been measured in terms of physiological indicators such as electrical conductance of the skin, penile tumescence and other physical manifestations or verbal articulations of sexual arousal (see Cantor et al., 1975; Golde, 2000; LaTour et al., 1991). In the present study, this category incorporated any reference to sexual behaviour trends, the sex industry or incidents involving nudity. In the sample of news stories analysed for this investigation qualifying stories included those concerning a streaker on the centre court at Wimbledon, an immigrant from Eastern Europe describing her experience as a prostitute in London and a discussion of the sexual behaviour of teenagers. Violence Studies analysing both fictional and non-fictional genres (Newhagen, 1998; Grimm, 1996) have shown that different depictions of violence can generate a neural arousal in viewers. Further evidence emerged from a childrens survey in the Netherlands that indicated the importance of violence as the strongest emotion-provoking content on TV news (van der Molen et al., 2002). In the case of the current analysis, a number of news stories reported on or depicted violence. Such stories included reports about violent crime, civil disturbances and war.
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Destruction Another feature that can have an emotional impact on audiences is scenes showing destruction and suffering after natural catastrophes such as major tropical storms, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and human-made devastation caused by war. Newhagens (1998) studies of adults and Cantor and Nathansons (1996) studies of children both established that stories about destruction can elicit strong emotional responses in news audiences. News images of devastation have been found to yield the same type of audience response (Grabe et al., 2003). Examples of this type of emotion-eliciting content in the current research surfaced in a story that visually covered the aftermath of a civil war in an African country and scenes (verbally and/or visually) describing the consequences of a natural disaster. Humour Humour has been found to be capable of eliciting emotional reactions in audiences just as strongly as sexual or violent content. Zillmann et al. (1994) reported that humorous news content could generate strong emotional reactions, particularly related to the relief of anxiety, when following negative news stories. Examples include a story that showed a person disguised as a chicken and another report about the death of a well-known comedian that included a voice-over of him telling a joke. Celebrities The emotional significance of the presence of celebrities has emerged from research into television programming and advertising. Although some studies have shown some doubt about the efficacy of celebrity images as direct triggers of emotional reactions (Cho and Newhagen, 2002), other studies have demonstrated their emotional appeal to audiences. There is evidence that supports the view that the presence of celebrities in the news may enhance audience involvement (Shearer and Mikulka, 1996). It has been reported that the use of celebrities can produce a significant difference in the perception of a TV clip, rendering it more exciting (Atkin and Block, 1983) and generating greater emotional involvement in viewers (Alperstein, 1991). Some examples of the presence of this attribute included a story showing pictures of celebrity figures attending a ceremony at 10 Downing Street in London and a report about footballer David Beckham in China. Other emotional content A further generic category was used that embraced a variety of other attributes. This category principally referred to the audio or visual portrayal of people expressing emotions such as sadness, anger, hunger or happiness (Zillmann, 1991; Zillmann and Cantor, 1977). Practical examples of this category in the news sample examined in this research included visual scenes of people crying after an earthquake, the faces of the relatives
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of a victim in the Gaza Strip, images of African children affected by famine or people celebrating. There were also verbal reports of stories with a negative (descriptions of people displaying anger, sadness or grief) or positive (laughing) slant. Finally, this category included the visual (but not the verbal) depiction of weapons, which has previously been shown to enhance postviewing aggressive response in observers (Berkowitz and LePage, 1967).
Unit of analysis

Thematic or topic classification was applied at the news story level, in which each news item was categorized in terms of its main topic type. Emotion-eliciting attributes were coded at the shot level within news stories. A shot was defined as a scene that derived from a single uninterrupted operation of the camera (Zettl, 2003). Coding procedure News items were initially labelled under a particular theme according to the main topic covered, then reclassified as sensational or non-sensational according to Ryus (1982) coding scheme. In addition, each scene/shot was classified in terms of the presence of any emotion-eliciting attributes within them. Since an assumption of this study was that news stories can convey information at both visual and auditory levels, each scene/shot was separately classified incorporating both of these modalities. The importance of both visual and auditory channels conveying emotionladen material has been stressed previously (Grabe et al., 2003). This procedure allowed the classification of shots in terms of both verbal or visual emotionality. Two coders participated in this coding exercise. The second coder analysed 7.5 percent, randomly selected, of the total sample studied (Riffe et al., 1998). Using Scotts pi formula, an observed level of agreement of over 0.8 was achieved for all coding categories.5
Sample

This study analysed a stratified random sample of 80 weekday newscasts (five-day composite week6). It comprised ITV (40 editions) and BBC1 (40 editions) newscasts from two periods: from September to August 19967 and 20023. ITV is the main British commercial TV channel and BBC1 is the principal publicly funded TV channel.7 All newscasts selected were those transmitted in the early evening, which in the case of BBC1 was at 18:00 and on ITV, at 17:40 in the period 1996/7 and at 18:30 in 2002/3 (see Table 1). These programmes were among the most watched news broadcasts during that time (BARB, 2002).
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Table 1 News sample 19967 BBC1 ITV Total 20 editions (4 weeks) 20 editions (4 weeks) 40 editions 20023 20 editions (4 weeks) 20 editions (4 weeks) 40 editions Total 40 editions 40 editions 80 editions

Data analysis

Analysis focused on the presence of emotion-eliciting attributes (in total, and in relation to visually and verbally based content) in news stories coded as either sensational or non-sensational with a further data breakdown by TV channel and year of transmission. Among stories classified as non-sensational, political stories comprised 17.3 percent of all sampled news time, defence news 16.3 percent and items about the justice system 8.3 percent. Among news items thematically classified as sensational, sports accounted for 8.1 percent of their news running time, crime 4.7 percent and the royal family 4.2 percent. Any stories that did not fit into one of the specified thematic categories were grouped as an aggregate macrocategory other news. In all cases, cross-tabulations were computed to analyse the degree of association between the presence of emotion-eliciting attributes among sensational and non-sensational items and within their most prominent topic-based subthemes. Tests of significance were estimated with chi-square using a confidence interval of 95 percent. Findings The research question asked whether sensational news (SN) stories contained more emotion-eliciting content than non-sensational news (N-SN) stories. This comparison was tested across the entire news sample, separately for verbal and visual content and for the major subtopics of sensational and non-sensational news items.
Content emotionality and sensational news stories

Overall presence of emotionality in sensational and non-sensational stories As Table 2 shows, not many differences were detected in terms of the presence of emotionality in SN and N-SN stories. Analysing the total sample, these
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Table 2 Presence of overall, visual and verbal emotionality in sensational and non-sensational stories by total sample, year and channel Overall emotionality Visual emotionality Verbal emotionality

NonNonNonsensational Sensational sensational Sensational sensational Sensational news news news news news news Total 19967 20023 BBC1 ITV 47.1% 38.1% 58.5% 45.3% 50.0% 44.8% 37.3% 47.3%* 43.6% 42.0%** 12.8% 10.8% 15.9% 13.3% 15.4% 15.3% 13.7% 16.6% 14.7% 15.7% 44.8% 36.1% 53.4% 42.4% 46.1% 39.4%* 35.7% 41.4%* 37.6%* 39.3%*

Base: Total news scene shots (N = 12,124)/total news stories (N = 1230). * p < .01, ** p < .05.

stories did not contain significantly different amounts of emotionality as measured in terms of story running time (SN = 44.8 percent, N-SN = 47.1 percent). In the examination by year, significant differences were only observed in the news in the 20023 period. However, the direction of the differences was the opposite from that expected: 58.5 percent for N-SN vs 47.3 percent for SN. Finally, in a channel-by-channel analysis only in the case of ITV were significant differences detected. Again N-SN items (50 percent of running time) significantly exceeded SN stories (42 percent of running time) in terms of the presence of emotion-eliciting features. Visual emotionality Further analyses were conducted in which the presence of emotion-eliciting features was assessed in respect of the visual content of SN and N-SN stories. Although visual emotional features were slightly more prominent in SN than in N-SN items, the difference was not statistically significant. This finding persisted across time periods and TV channels (see Table 2). Verbal emotionality The same analysis was repeated for the verbal content of the newscasts in the sample. These results showed more statistically significant differences (see Table 2). Only in the case of the 19967 subsample were no differences detected. In all other comparisons, SN stories contained smaller proportions of running time devoted to emotion-eliciting elements in the verbal content than did N-SN stories. The total presence of emotioneliciting features in the verbal modality was significantly greater in N-SN (44.8 percent of running time) than in SN stories (39.4 percent). A similar
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pattern occurred in the news subsample from 2002 to 2003 (53.4 percent vs 41.4 percent respectively) and with regard to the news from both ITV (46.1 percent vs 39.3 percent) and BBC1 (42.2 percent vs 37.6 percent).
Emotionality in the most prominent topics

Further analyses were carried out to examine the relative presence of emotion-eliciting features in different thematic subcategories of N-SN and SN stories. The major topics differentiated here were crime, royal family and sports in the case of SN items, and defence, justice system and political stories in the case of N-SN stories. Other subtopics were combined under the other news category. The presence of emotionality in each thematic category is displayed in Table 3. After calculating cross-tabulations,8 it was possible to rank thematic categories in terms of their relative levels of emotion-eliciting features (see Figure 1). Results showed inconsistent patterns, with some themes varying in their level of emotion-eliciting attributes in the different news subsamples examined. The exceptions were crime (always depicting the highest level of emotion-eliciting attributes) and political stories, which generally depicted the least emotion-eliciting material. On examining the total presence of emotion-eliciting material, crime an SN topic emerged as the most emotion-laden thematic category (almost 65 percent of the running time of crime stories contained emotion-eliciting elements). Next came stories about defence and the justice system (two SN topics) with approximately 56 percent of their running time occupied by emotion-eliciting content. Then followed other news stories and stories about the royal family in which about 47 percent of running time was occupied by emotion-eliciting material. Finally, parliamentary/political and sports stories, which all contained similar levels of emotion-eliciting

Table 3 Emotionality in the most prominent sensational and non-sensational news Crime Total 19967 20023 BBC1 ITV 64.8% 58.4% 68.5% 68.9% 59.8% Sports 42.1% 38.9% 48.1% 38.3% 44.1% Royal family 47.8% 40.6% 55.2% 47.0% 48.2% Defence/ war 56.3% 55.8% 57.0% 58.6% 55.2% Justice system 55.4% 52.9% 57.3% 54.3% 56.7% Politics 41.5% 31.5% 53.9% 38.0% 43.8% Other news 47.0% 39.9% 55.1% 47.8% 45.9%

Base: Total news scene shots (N = 12,124)/total news stories (N = 1230).

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Higher emotionality Total Crime Defence Justice system Sports Other news

Lower emotionality Royal family Political Political

19967

Crime Defence Justice system Crime

Other news Sports Royal family Other news Defence Justice system Political Royal family Defence Justice system Royal family Other news

20023

Sports

BBC1

Crime

Sports Political

ITV

Crime Defence Justice system

Other news Royal family Political Sports

Figure 1 Summary of the presence of emotionality in the most prominent sensational and non-sensational news items

material (around 41 percent of running time), were markedly less emotional news categories than any other. The same analysis was carried out with the news subsamples from the 19967 and 20023 periods. In 19967, the thematic categories containing the highest levels of emotion-eliciting material were crime, defence and the justice system (about 55 percent of running time each). They were followed by other news, sports and the royal family (about 40 percent). Finally, political news stories depicted the lowest presence of emotionality (31.5 percent). In the 20023 news subsample, crime news stories contained the greatest amount (68.5 percent) of emotion-eliciting content and sports news stories contained the least (48.1 percent). Other thematic categories fell in between these two extremes. Finally, the news subsamples from BBC1 and ITV were compared. In the case of the BBC, crime news contained the greatest amount of emotioneliciting material (68.9 percent of story running time), followed by stories about defence and the justice system (about 55 percent each), then stories about the royal family and other news stories (around 47 percent in each case). Finally, sports and political news stories were found to contain the least amounts of emotion-eliciting elements (38 percent). On ITV, thematic
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categories clustered into two groups: crime, defence and the justice system, which comprised high levels of emotion-eliciting content (about 55 percent of news running time), and the royal family, politics, sports and other news, having low levels of such content (around 44 percent). Discussion This article has presented an analysis of television news in the UK that has examined levels of emotion-eliciting content in news stories classified as either sensational or non-sensational (according to Ryu, 1982). The emotionality of the news was operationally defined in terms of the presence of specific narrative and visual features that audience research has shown to have emotion-eliciting properties. In previous studies of the changing quality of news, topic-based news classifications have been central to empirical demonstrations of whether or not televised news has become more sensational (or tabloidized). Other writers have argued the importance of using a system of content classification that is adequately validated where inferences about its audience-impact-related qualities are concerned (Grabe et al., 2001; Hendriks Vettehen et al., 2005). This research conducted an assessment of television news using a coding frame in which news stories were classified not only in terms of thematic category but also according to the presence of specific attributes known through audience research to have emotion-eliciting properties. The central research hypothesis tested was that stories classified in terms of their topic type as sensational should, by definition, contain more emotion-laden ingredients than stories classed as non-sensational. No clear evidence emerged in support of this hypothesis. In fact, on examining the association between topic type and the presence of emotionality (as defined by the presence of emotion-eliciting attributes in news stories), a small but non-significant difference was detected between so-called sensational and non-sensational news across several comparisons. Even more interesting was the finding that, when significant differences between sensational and non-sensational news stories were detected, the result was the opposite of what was expected, with non-sensational news items often showing a greater presence of emotion-eliciting features than sensational news stories. These results were particularly acute in the case of the news subsamples for 20023 and for the commercially funded channel, ITV. At first glance, these results seem counterintuitive, given the traditional view that emotional content is presumed to be associated with more dramatic or sensational news. A more detailed examination of the data, however, yielded an explanation consistent with one offered by other
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researchers. A number of writers have highlighted that news packaging has increasingly tried to provide more appealing coverage (for audiences), particularly in the case of those stories that cover issues normally considered, by their intrinsic nature, to be boring (see Franklin, 1997; Graber, 1994). When comparisons were made by modality (audio and visual mode), no differences were detected in respect of visual emotion-laden elements, but differences in levels of emotionality of the news were detected in the verbal modality. These results showed that at this level non-sensational news stories contained a significant quantity of potentially emotion-arousing content. Further analyses of changing emotionality levels by news subtopics within the broader sensational and non-sensational categories presented a more complex picture. These revealed a lack of consistency in trends in emotionality levels within different news topic types across TV channels and over time. Within sensational news, it was mainly news about crime that exhibited increased emotionality compared to other thematic news topics. Within the non-sensational news category, thematic topics such as defence and the justice system also exhibited relatively prominent amounts of potentially emotion-eliciting content. Other topics, whether subsumed broadly under the sensational or non-sensational categories, displayed significantly smaller amounts of potentially emotion-eliciting content. These findings can be interpreted from different perspectives. One outcome of this analysis is that caution is needed in the case of arguments about the changing qualities of news based on analyses of the changing prominence of different thematic topics. It is frequently stated in studies of the dumbing down of the news that this phenomenon is manifest in changes in the relative amounts of hard and soft news that are broadcast or published. Another way of expressing this trend is to point to the increasingly tabloid agenda of the news and a movement away from a broadsheet agenda. As a consequence, news has become more attuned to the entertainment needs of media audiences and producers therefore feel under pressure to engage audiences by playing to their emotions. All this may be true. The case being made by this article, however, is that wherever there are inferences being made about news and audience emotions, a more sensitive level of analysis is needed to reveal whether or not the news has become more emotionally oriented. At this level of analysis, the results show that a generic character of stories cannot be presumed on the grounds that a news report can be assigned to a specific thematic category such as politics, economics or sport (although this is not the case for crime news stories). Furthermore, when applying labels such as sensational to the news, which makes a more explicit reference to audience reaction, it is inadvisable to impute
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specific reactions in the absence of supporting empirical evidence. If this argument is accepted, it underlines the advantages of an analytical system that examines not only the thematic nature of news stories but also their emotion-eliciting narrative and visual properties. This does not mean the rejection of topic- or theme-based analysis of news output in understanding the changing nature of news quality, but rather argues for recognition of the limitations of this approach. The current analysis also underlines the importance of examining emotion-eliciting properties of news both in relation to its narrative (or verbal content) and its other production features (non-verbal content). This point is particularly relevant in the context of television news. The data reported in this article indicated that both narrative and visual elements of televised news can contain emotion-eliciting attributes. Any analysis that focuses on just the verbal content of the news therefore would risk omitting a vitally important aspect of news emotionality the pictures and sounds that are used to support the words that are spoken. From a more theoretical perspective, the absence of a positive association between sensational news topics and the presence of emotionally arousing features invites new questions about the characteristics of news packaging, at least in Britain. First, is this a general tendency across the different British media or is it a pattern specific to television? More research is needed to evaluate whether or not newspapers and Internet news coverage follow the same pattern. Second, are TV journalists fully conscious of this trend towards an increased presence of emotion-eliciting features in televised news? And, if so, has this trend been deliberately implemented to compete more effectively for audiences? In this respect, it is interesting to supplement the ideas of authors such as Graber (1994) and Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) in terms of the role of commercial pressures and media populism to attract audiences with some recommendations derived from other commentators and researchers (Kevill, 2002; Lang et al., 2003). These writers have openly suggested the relevance of a coverage based on a more varied presentation style, a more colloquial tone (Kevill, 2002: 21) as a way to promote better audience engagement. Thus, the presence of emotion-eliciting features in news may not only be a response to external market pressures but could also be related to a motivation on the part of news professionals to produce more engaging coverage of those issues that are relevant for the public debate. Finally, these results also have implications in terms of audiences information processing. According to the notion of audiovisual redundancy, the news becomes more memorable for audiences when the narrative and other production elements are mutually supportive in terms of
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the information they both convey (Gunter, 1987). Video information (in comparison with audio information) tends to be processed more automatically and enhances memory without increasing the capacity required to process the message (Lang, 2000; Basil, 1994). Theoretically, this could mean that the power of visual or verbal emotionalization is not necessarily the same (Brosius et al., 1996; Crigler et al., 1994). The degree of balance between emotion-eliciting features in the verbal and non-verbal components of televised news stories therefore needs to be further monitored. Then accompanying audience research could be used to assess whether the memorability of televised news is affected by an imbalance between, for example, pictures and words, not only in terms of their informational content but also in terms of the emotional content. Appendix: Intercoder reliability
Topics

Agriculture (0.91), business (0.90), charities (0.95), crime (0.89), defence (0.89), diet/beauty/fashion (0.91), disaster/accident (0.98), drugs/alcohol (0.93), the economy (0.91), education (0.89), employment (0.92), culture/entertainment/showbiz (0.87), environment (0.86), equal rights (N/A9), European Community (0.84), gambling (0.87), health (0.92), housing (0.88), human interest (0.89), justice system (0.89), local government (0.95), media (0.87), motors/cars (N/A), Northern Ireland (0.81), past events (0.93), parliamentary/political news (0.83), racing (N/A), religion (N/A), royal family (0.82), science (0.92), sex stories (0.87), social issues (0.82), social security (N/A), space (N/A), sport (0.90), transport (0.86), unions (0.82) and other news (0.83)
Emotion-laden material

Sex (0.89; 0.8110), violence (0.91; 0.87), humour (0.85; 0.93), destruction (0.87; 0.89), celebrities (0.93; 0.85), other emotional content (0.86; 0.82). Notes
The authors want to thank the anonymous reviewers of the original manuscript for their useful comments and suggestions, which are part of this version of the article. 1. Although sensationalism and tabloidization (as well as infotainment, dumbing down and emotainment) do not have exactly the same meaning, the former being described as a feature of the latter (e.g. Franklin, 1997), they have been used interchangeably in the literature and are used in this way in this article.
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2. It is important to note that sensational topics cover, more or less, the same areas as tabloid items do. However, since the presence of emotionality is more directly analysed by the notion of sensationalism, this differentiation (i.e. sensational/non-sensational) was used. 3. Royal family is not a code traditionally included in American research because it is not generally a relevant topic in that country. However, it was included as a sensational/tabloid topic following the ideas of European authors such as Barnett et al. (2000) and Sparks (2000), who propose that this theme is inextricably linked with a sensationalist and tabloid-like style of journalism. It is important to note that news items were coded as royal family when one or more of its members appeared in a non-political context. When the Queen gave a speech in the British parliament or visited another head of state, it was coded as political/parliamentary news. 4. Although arousal and emotion are not technically the same, different theories have recognized the relevance of considering the presence of arousal as an indicator strongly linked with emotional response. In the case of theories of emotionality, such as those of James Lang and Schachter-Singer, it is proposed that following arousal the experience of emotion is felt. CannonBard and the Lazarus theories suggest a different perspective: that emotion and arousal are simultaneous process (Scherer, 1986; Strongman, 1996; Bradley and Lang, 2000). Additionally, it is important to bear in mind that verbal measures of emotionality have frequently exhibited significant correlations with physiological measures of emotional responses (Bradley and Lang, 2000; Carretie et al., 2001; Ito et al., 1998; Lang et al., 1998; Lang, 1994). 5. For detailed figures of intercoder reliability, see the Appendix. 6. In the UK, full-length editions of the main news programmes are only broadcast between Monday and Friday. 7. At the time this study was carried out there were various other news programmes broadcast in the UK. On the one hand, on terrestrial TV, there were the newscasts from BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel Five, while on satellite or cable (paid and free-view) programmes there were the news channels BBC News 24, ITN News and Sky News. 8. All of the cross-tabulations were considered significant at p < .05. 9. N/A means that this category was not used in the analysis. 10. The first number indicates the intercoder reliability for visual content and the second, the figure for verbal material.

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