Direct Reader Address in Health-related Online News Articles: Imposing Problems and Projecting Desires for Action and Change onto Readers

Abstract

The digitalisation and commercialisation of the news mean journalistic practices are changing. Traditionally, readers are not addressed in written news stories. This study documents practices of direct reader address in online news headlines on health topics from three Nordic countries. The study focuses on the linguistic means of constructing the reader and journalist-reader relationship through forms of direct address. For this purpose, we take pragmatic-interactional and discourse-analytical approaches. Building on a discursive view on news values, the paper analyses three practices of addressing readers in headlines, outlines how news values are discursively constructed through these practices, and examines how journalists construct their target audience discursively by imposing problems and projecting desires for action and change onto readers, indicating assumptions about the readers' knowledge. We argue that, by using such practices, journalists construct journalistic authority.

Book Reviews

“…Traditionally, personal stories have not been dominant, and readers have not been addressed in online news stories. In a previous study about online news stories on health in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, and Finland), it is argued that, by using direct reader address practices, journalists might construct journalistic authority (Andersen et al, 2019). From my perspective, this is part of a new set of practices in parallel with the focal point of personal stories and personalisation.…”

The softening of Chinese digital propaganda: Evidence from the People’s Daily Weibo account during the pandemic

“…The traditional relationship between audiences and news organizations is changing because more people are accessing news through mobile devices. Sharing, commenting, and liking news have already altered the assumption of the passive audience in the traditional model of a one-way flow of information (Andersen et al, 2019(Andersen et al, , p. 2480. Social media is designed for public use, so content should attract the public (Huang and Lu, 2017).…”

Emotions in Crisis Coverage: How UK News Media Used Fear Appeals to Report on the Coronavirus Crisis

“…According to fear appeals literature, the susceptibility to threats is further conveyed by directly addressing individuals (Witte 1992;Witte and Allen 2000). As such practices are not commonly found in the news (Andersen et al 2019), we diverge from this understanding and, in the context of news, argue that susceptibility can be indicated through two elements: first, by journalists illustrating who amongst the audience is likely to experience threats, for example by emphasizing the location of a threat's impact (Goodall et al 2012;Hart and Feldman 2014); second, by using a personal angle, meaning at least one person-understood as ordinary citizens, public figures, or professional experts-reports their private experiences and/or opinions (Peter and Zerback 2020;Uribe and Gunter 2004). Personal angles are important as "audiences are more likely to be emotionally engaged, recall information and take action when news stories are relatable" (Wahl-Jorgensen 2020a, p. 189).…”