TY - JOUR A1 - Mack, Matthias A1 - Jandura, Olaf A1 - Maurer, Marcus T1 - The effects of constructive journalism: Towards a theoretical framework T2 - Journalism N2 - News media coverage mainly focuses on problems and conflicts, resulting in unintended negative consequences for democracy and journalism itself. Constructive journalism aims to address these issues by emphasizing solution-oriented reporting. However, research on its effects remains inconsistent, mainly due to vague definitions of constructive journalism and a lack of theoretical foundation. This paper first proposes a content-centered definition of constructive journalism, suggesting three dimensions: balance, matter-of-factness, and focus on solutions. Using a series of established theories, we then present a theoretical framework that models the impacts of the content dimensions in a chain of effects from emotions to cognitive and conative variables. Our approach offers a systematic basis for future research by enabling experimental analysis of operationalizable and empirically separable content dimensions and by integrating research on constructive journalism into a variety of established media effect theories. Thus, we meet the demand for a stronger theoretical focus and aim to clarify constructive journalism’s impact on audiences. KW - Journalismus KW - Berichterstattung KW - Gefühl KW - Positive Psychologie KW - Demokratie Y1 - 2025 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hs-duesseldorf/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5863 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:due62-opus-58634 SN - 1464-8849 SP - 1 EP - 20 PB - SAGE Publications ER -