Explaining Effects of Sensationalism on Liking of Television News Stories: The Role of Emotional Arousal
Open accessAbstract
This study investigates the appeal of sensationalist television news. News stories were content analyzed to measure the presence of sensationalist features. In addition, the stories were watched and evaluated by participants to measure the degree to which the items elicited emotional arousal and the degree to which the items were liked. As predicted, the findings showed that emotional arousal mediates effects of sensationalist features on liking and that the relationship between emotional arousal and liking takes the shape of an inverted U.
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Sensationalism in journalism is associated with dramatic presentation, emotional appeals, moral polarization, and prioritization of shock or curiosity over proportionality.
“It has long been associated with dramatic presentation, emotional appeals, moral polarization, and the prioritization of shock or curiosity over proportionality (Molek-Kozakowska, 2013;Vettehen et al., 2008).”
From Sensational Headlines, Engagement, and Credibility in Nepal’s Online News (2025) · cites this paper as Vettehen et al., 2008
The Sensationalism section (page unavailable) identifies dramatic subjects and attention-getting audiovisual features, and the Discussion links some of these features to viewers’ emotional arousal. The paper does not characterize sensationalism in terms of moral polarization or prioritizing shock or curiosity over proportionality. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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Cites
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“After the coding process was finished, Krippendorff’s alphas were calculated for each sensationalist feature and for each pair of coders as a measure of intercoder reliability (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007).”
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Sensational Headlines, Engagement, and Credibility in Nepal’s Online News
Dahal, S. (2025) · Nepalese Journal of Development and Rural Studies · doi:10.3126/njdrs.v22i1.99390
- Authors
- Vettehen, P. H., Nuijten, K., & Peeters, A.
- Affiliations
- Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
- Breda University of Applied Sciences
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)
- Venue
- Communication Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2008-04-14
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 319-338
- ISSN
- 0093-6502 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-3810
- OpenAlex
- W2108620471
- Cited by
- 102
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 20.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Communication Research (publishedVersion)
- Breda University of Applied Sciences Portal (publishedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Breda University of Applied Sciences Portal (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media Studies and Communication
- Social Sciences › Communication › Journalism and Media Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Media Influence and Health
- Keywords
- sensationalism, television news, emotional arousal, inverted U-shaped relationship, news appeal, media influence, news content analysis
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