Abstract

This article considers whether 'sensational' news stories are intrinsically more likely to elicit emotional responses in audiences than other TV news stories. The research analyses a sample of British televised news in respect of empirically validated attributes, to identify the presence of particular content elements that audience research has shown to possess emotion-eliciting capabilities. The results show that news stories traditionally classified as 'sensational' - a term that implies a dramatic and therefore emotion-arousing imperative - do not necessarily contain more emotionally arousing features than other types of news story. Only crime stories (among the most frequently occurring 'sensational' news categories) and, to a limited extent, political stories (a classic 'non-sensational' news topic) provide clear manifestations of the presence of high and low emotion-laden attributes. Moreover, those topics containing more emotion-laden material are not the same over time or across public and commercial TV channels. Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publication.