Digital Narrative Game Phase 2: Research

"Yesterdays news" by (Mick Baker)rooster is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The Basic Idea

We decided to do our digital narrative game on sensationalism in the news, specifically in headlines. The general idea is to create a game to bring attention to exaggerated headlines, especially those related to COVID-19 and similarly popular news topics, and to show the negative effects that they can have on greater audiences.​

Sensationalism: Definition, Motivation, and Effects

According to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, sensationalism is "the presentation of stories in a way that is intended to provoke public interest or excitement, at the expense of accuracy."

As such, it makes sense why companies or networks would opt for it; most of the time (unfortunately) news is not so much about information as it is about getting users to click on the article so they may be taken to their website. It's very profit-driven, and when the general motto is "publish first, verify later," you can bet a lot of exaggeration falls through the cracks.

​One might think that hyperbole is not nearly so detrimental as I might make it out to be, but I assure you this is wrong. Consider this: some media professional wants to publish some news about the pandemic. But the density of COVID news right now (and for the past year for that matter) makes such an article negligible, just another title in the crowd. So, how to make it stand out? Well, with an attention grabbing headline, of course!

And herein lies the problem: depending on what the professional decides to emphasize in their headline, potential audiences can be terribly misled. Take what Scacco and Muddiman (2015) have to say about this in the context of trials: "Headlines can, for instance, influence how news readers think about a whether a suspect is guilty of a crime. An early study of news headlines conducted by Percy H. Tannenbaum found that headlines suggesting that a person on trial was guilty led people who read a news story to think that person was guilty. A headline suggesting that a person was innocent led people who read the exact same news story to think that the person was innocent. In other words, changing only the headline led news readers to reach different conclusions about a person’s guilt or innocence."

As can be gathered from this passage, a headline can easily sway - and so easily mislead - an audience. And this is precisely what we wish to bring attention to with our game.

Another dangerous aspect of sensationalism lies on the other side of the spectrum of people's responses to news. While some might react strongly to every new COVID headline, for example, others may become desensitized by the sensationalism. If an alarm bell is constantly, constantly ringing to alert us to something, eventually it will fade into background noise. It may even become exhausting to follow especially because of the over-the-top sensationalism, thus resulting in pandemic fatigue, which could lead to general apathy towards the situation. 

This, in turn, is also bad because it means that when significant news does actually come in to play, people will not be able to pay attention to it as much as they should.

Headline Examples

We found some relevant examples of exaggerated headlines, courtesy of YourDictionary.com

From Mother Jones, an article titled The Scary New Science That Shows Milk Is Bad For You, which ultimately "talks about how adults don't need as much calcium as previously suggested"

From CNN, the headline Ebola in the Air? A Nightmare That Could Happen, which leads to an article that explains how "the World Health Organization actually says that type of virus mutation is highly unlikely and is only speculation"

From Bloomberg, the alarming cover page Ebola is Coming, which resultingly "greatly exaggerated what was a very real threat without having to be sensationalized"

Other Relevant Quotes and Sources

Quotes:
“...Those debates have fuelled media reporting, even when the evidence is still uncertain and research is ongoing.” (Garret 2020)

“The difficulty in sifting fact from inaccurate information is aggravated by the speed of unfolding events, how much is still to be researched and understood by scientists and clinicians about COVID-19, alongside earlier deliberate obfuscation by some governments.” (Garret 2020)
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Other Links:
https://theconversation.com/aiming-for-novelty-in-coronavirus-coverage-journalists-end-up-sensationalizing-the-trivial-and-untrue-138506

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/brilliant-clickbait-examples-and-why-they-work.html

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1178220.shtml

Scholarly Sources:
Garrett, L. (2020). COVID-19: the medium is the message. The lancet, 395(10228), 942-943.

Lowe, L. (2016). Crying wolf: An analysis of the use of sensational content within the media and the desensitizing effects it has on audiences.

Scacco, Joshua and Muddiman, Ashley. (2015, December). The Current State of News Headlines. Center for Media Engagement. https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-current-state-of-news-headlines/

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