Tag: #news avoidance

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Humor is constructive – Why laughing about climate change can open paths to solutions

Is it okay to laugh heartily even when the situation is serious? Yes, because it is precisely in these situations that humor can help journalism to make formats interesting even for people who might not care otherwise. A plea for more humor – in everyday life and at work.

Doom-scrolling rarely works. Research shows that journalism on climate change is more likely to have an impact if it not only highlights the many different issues involved, but also offers a few solutions. People who report that they regularly avoid the news would like to see more offerings that give them hope and explain things, rather than having to digest the same drama over and over again. This is also confirmed by the Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report. But what about humor? Is it okay to laugh heartily, even when the situation is serious?

One might seek permission posthumously from great humorists. In the 1942 comedy “To Be or Not to Be,” director Ernst Lubitsch even had his actors joke about concentration camps while World War II raged outside. But it’s not just about being allowed to joke – subject to a few rules, of course. Evidence suggests that humor is particularly effective at spurring people to action. This is, because jokes convey unpleasant truths the light way. They hold up a mirror to people without making them feel guilty, and for that very reason invite them to reflect about their behavior.

Laughing at yourself instead of feeling guilty

This also works when it comes to climate change. Matt Winning is a Scottish environmental economist. After work, he often climbs up London stages as a stand-up comedian; for a few years now, he has been combining hobby and profession. “We have to make content for people we don’t make content for,” he said in an interview for the report “Climate Journalism That Works: Between Knowledge and Impact.”

His shows, he says, are not so much for environmental professionals, activists and policy experts, as for those people who have been more peripherally involved with climate action. He says he is touched when such guests linger around at the end of the show to tell him that they have now got rid of their car, given up on flying for their summer vacations or found out about heat pumps. In his book “Hot Mess: What on earth can we do about climate change?” Winning tries to get people to understand the topic in a playful way.

Maxwell Boykoff and his colleague Beth Osnes are trying out something similar at the University of Colorado in Boulder. They had initiated the ” Inside the Greenhouse” project as a collaboration between the departments of theater and environmental policy. They published their first findings from it in an academic article in 2019: A light approach to the issues around climate change helps students confront their own feelings, especially fears, deal with them creatively and become better climate communicators, they said.

Why humor can help at the working place

Professors Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas teach humor in management at Stanford Business School. In their book “Humour, Seriously – Why Humour is a Secret Weapon in Work and in Life” they describe the role that cheerfulness can play in achieving (business) goals. Humor builds community, strengthens problem-solving skills and resilience. Managers who can laugh at themselves appear close and authentic.

In journalism, young people in particular appreciate humorous formats. It is important to them that content is useful, but they also like it to be fun. A study published in 2021 by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found that young consumers remembered news better when it was presented in a humorous way. More brain regions would be activated during laughter. The rise of TikTok as a channel for news delivery – also documented in the recent Digital News Report – shows how quickly a platform specializing in lighter fare can catch on.

Of course, humor will always be just a complementary form of communication. This is the case also because only a few people have mastered the subject to perfection. For example, one basic rule is: Humor works when you punch up or among your peers. Anyone who makes fun of those conceived to be less powerful is most likely to miss the mark – which is why joking is a tightrope walk for leaders. In any case, what someone laughs at and what jokes he or she makes depends on the cultural context but also reveals a lot about character. As Aaker and Bagdonas write, “Humor is a kind of intelligence you can’t fake.”

This text first appeared in German as an Op Ed on Focus online on June 23, 2023. It was translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator and edited. 

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Desperately Seeking Youngsters – Seven Insights About a Demanding Audience

This phrase keeps popping up regularly in editorial meetings: Everyone is presenting their topics, and then one of the bosses throws it in: “We have to do something for young people.” Perplexity escapes the eyes of older participants. Maybe something about Tik Tok? About hip music or the approaching high school graduation? Everyone younger than 30 goes into hiding, just in case. They know that their most important job is to impress their over-40 superiors with clever suggestions that will go down well with the over-60 clientele. After all, they want to be taken seriously.

Established media companies and young audiences have a hard time with each other. While the former cannot do without the latter, because this would result in their economic starvation, the latter can very well do without many things that ensure the livelihood of publishers and broadcasters: Subscriptions, apps, and live TV, for example. Even with digital there is no guarantee. According to the Digital News Report 2020, 84 percent of under-25s don’t go directly to a media brand’s website, but get information from what social media, search engines or news aggregators flush into their timelines or onto their screens via push messages. This is why established media put it on the agenda again and again: Young users desperately wanted.

But what about young people’s media consumption, what do they like, what do they ignore, when do they tune in and when do they tune out? Judging by how much and how long the topic has preoccupied newsrooms, research on this is fairly slant. For the German market, two studies revealed important findings this spring.  One is “#usethenews”, published in April 2021 by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research Hans-Bredow Institute. The second one puts an emphasis on media literacy and was published in March by the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. From this, my own research and from countless conversations with students from various disciplines, a few things have emerged that editorial strategists should know.

First: The house is indeed on fire on this topic, not only as far as the future of publishers is concerned, but also with regard to civic engagement in democracy. According to the research team at the Hans Bredow Institute, around one in two young people do not consider it important to be informed about current events. They provide the explanation right away: “Journalism often lacks a connection to young people’s everyday lives.” So it’s not enough to shrug and point to the generally rising proportion of news avoiders, which the Digital News Report puts at around one-third internationally. Among the younger generation, news abstinence is much more pronounced. Anyone who is serious about journalism as a pillar of democracy should therefore take urgent action.

Second, the gap between those who are well informed and competent and those who can barely find their way in the new information landscape is widening. Whereas formerly, even those with a low level of education used to be reasonably well informed, perhaps because there was a newspaper lying around here and there, because they watched TV news out of boredom, or were force-fed hourly radio news while driving, all of this can be completely avoided in the age of maximum distraction possibilities. The information gap that the Internet was supposed to close is opening up more and more as a digital divide between the social classes – if nothing is done. Public broadcasters with their mandate to offer journalism for everyone have a special obligation here.

Third: Fortunately, many young people are interested in the world around them after all – just not always in what seasoned politics and feature editors find exciting. Those who enjoy journalism like to check out the local news. Anything to do with environmental protection and science is thought after, at least by the better educated. Incidentally, in a recent American study on news avoidance (“The head and heart of news avoidance”), it were also stories touching health, science, the environment and local affairs that news avoiders of all generations were most likely to be interested in. Newsrooms whose informal pecking order starts with the politics desk followed by a large gap will have to adjust.

Fourth, what unites all users of the younger generations is a preference for light subject matter. According to the Leibniz study, “funny and strange” is consistently well received. In any case, humor is a pretty sure way to get a hearing among generations Y and Z, as evidenced not only by Böhmermann and Co. But beware, it’s not necessarily the kind of humor that those same mature executives like. Joking at the expense of weaker people is not acceptable. Those who dish it out have to at least take a joke themselves once in a while. In the humor department of journalism, the same applies as with uncertain sources: If in doubt, leave it alone.

Fifth: There’s no way around influencers, but they don’t have to be Instagram marketing heroes. When the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter had Greta Thunberg head the newsdesk for one day last year, digital subscriptions came rushing in, several thousand in one day. Celebrities increase reach and help get messages across. Rule of thumb: Celebrities should come across as people, not officials. Having the movie star talk about politics and the politician talk about movies can make both more credible, if they mean it honestly. Young people are trained to distinguish between genuine authenticity and staged approachability.

Sixth, diversity counts – and not just as a box-ticking exercise. Young people expect a program or brand to portray the world as they experience it. They may be able to identify with protagonists and perhaps even contribute something themselves. This includes language that is both casual and respectful and content that – see above – has something to do with their everyday lives. News should be useful and fun, was the conclusion of a study on young journalism users published by market researcher Flamingo together with the Reuters Institute in 2019. Constructive journalism that opens the world wide with perspectives is therefore particularly well received by the young generation. Rule of thumb: You can trust the audience with something. The success of science-driven formats such as Brainstorm by Irish public broadcaster RTE or the German magazine Katapult are proof of this. It’s a pity for cost killers that in-depth research is usually more time-consuming than dishing out news copy-and-paste style. But quick news is everywhere these days. You could say that young people are journalism gourmets.

Seventh: Journalism must be easily accessible and well prepared. Digitization trains all generations for convenience; Amazon, PayPal, Spotify and Co. have set the gold standard for user-friendliness. The old world, in which people still read instruction manuals, wrote down phone numbers and went to the kiosk on the corner, is disappearing. For journalism, this means it has to go where the users are and make it easy for them. The American study mentioned above says that barriers to understanding and a lack of self-confidence in dealing with the media are the main reasons why people give news a wide berth. When in doubt, the interactive infographic with three bullet points beats the 200-line editorial. This is bitter for some authors. While complexity used to be a sign of quality, today it has to be well justified. This is good. Because in the past it has all too often merely concealed incompetence or laziness.

This column was published in German on May 17, 2021 by Medieninsider. It was translated by DeepL and then edited.