Negativity in Local Newspapers.

In today's newspaper, Local as well as national, stories that include bad and horrid stories seem to be always in

the news, Negativity is one of most important news criteria's in local newspapers today.

Source: http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/

NegativeNegative

Positive

Negative

Positive

NegativeNegative

As you can see, most of the Sutton Guardian has negative news stories in their most popular posts. Only two stories are actually positive.

Source: http://www.basingstokeobserver.co.uk/

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Positive

This screenshot is a section for the latest news, again, most of the stories are negative

Source: http://www.bicesteradvertiser.net/news/

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Positive

Positive

This example has a bit more positive news, however, negativity still dominates the news post for this local newspaper

Results

13

7

After looking at the three random local newspapers, We can see that the majority of the ‘Most popular’ stories are Negative. Having a look at 20 stories, only 7 of them are positive and the rest (13) are negative.

So, why is this?

Personally, I believe that it is something to do with Schadenfreude. People seem to be amused by others suffering. Reading about negative news about others, for example war or a serious injury, people seem to be interesting in this type of news, rather than being amused.