Strategies to combat news avoidance

Abstract

This research outlines the strategies that communicators involved with audience engagement in news organizations are using to reach their audiences despite compassion fatigue-induced news avoidance. The research was based in gatekeeping theory and gathered from semi-structured interviews with communicators in US news organizations about what strategies their communications teams were forming or adopting in response to compassion fatigue-induced news avoidance, as well as the self-evaluated success of those strategies. Strategies cited include solutions journalism, tracking search engine queries and newsletter formats.