This research by by Subodha Kumar, Susan Mudambi, Joydeep Srivastava, and Debashish Ghose (Northeastern University, Temple University’s Fox School of Business PhD Alum, ’21) examines the impact of narrativity and emotional sequence in traditional and satirical news on social media engagement. It finds that storytelling effects depend on news format, language complexity, and audience motivation. Complex satirical news with a bad-to-good emotional order engages motivated audiences better. Traditional news benefits from simpler language and a good-to-bad emotional order for wider audiences. Engagement is driven by perceived interestingness and gratification types. These insights guide content creators to design stories that maximize audience engagement.
News and Storytelling
