Constructive News Lab
In journalism it is said that "Only bad news is good news". But what if journalism could do much more than just inform us about the world's crises, catastrophes and conflicts? Almost a third (32%) of those surveyed in the Digital News Report 2019 are now actively trying to avoid news ("news avoidance") – the excessive focus on negativity is an important reason for this.
In Denmark, where Constructive News is already more widespread than here, recent studies show that 58% of people want much more coverage of solutions to social problems, 68% demand more perspectives in reporting, and 51% even want to be more inspired by news. The goal should not be to report more positively on world events, but rather more realistically. After all, the media should not present our reality in a distorting mirror, but as it is. This requires a holistic and systematic approach to social phenomena, for example, in order to recognize the larger social connections behind individual phenomena.
Constructive journalism is particularly widespread in Scandinavia, but there are individual formats worldwide, ranging from the daily news ("Solution Finder") to the New York Times ("Fixes"). futur eins helps editorial offices to integrate this form of journalism into their everyday work and/or to develop their own formats for it. In workshops lasting one to several days, methods of constructive journalism are presented, and ideas and concepts are developed and tested together.
Further topics
#01
Public Welfare Oriented Media Policy
A media order that emphasizes the remoteness of the media from the state, seeks to secure diversity, protects public-law systems from market power, and seeks to prevent monopolies of opinion as well as economic cartels is still a good foundation for a modern or even technically revolutionary media world. We think future-proof concepts that protect and further develop this foundation.
#02
Digital Knowledge Architectures
Digitization offers completely new opportunities for knowledge processing and networking that we as a society can use. This also means leaving the attention economy behind and, for example, placing strategic social megatopics on resubmission. To achieve this, science and journalism need to move closer together to think in terms of joint information platforms.
#03
Next Generation Social Media
The first age of social networks was a gigantic global success with a new form of human interconnectivity and communication, but also dark underbellies of destructive disinformation and propaganda. What can we learn from the first age, about business models, blueprints, algorithms, and echo chambers, and do better in the next?