How journalism is turning emotional and what that might mean for news

As journalism and society changes emotion is becoming a much more important dynamic in how news is produced and consumed. I would argue that this is redefining the classic idea of journalistic objectivity, indeed, it is reshaping the idea of news itself. That matters because journalism has an increasingly significant role in our lives as information, data and social media become more ubiquitous and more influential. At the moment journalists are exploring this as a professional phenomenon and citizens are seeing it as something that is personal – but I will suggest that to understand this better we need to think about the science around the relationship between emotions and understanding and behaviour.