Abstract
News media seem to have insufficient knowledge on how to reach Millennials. An important question is how professional journalism can prevent the disillusion that a growing number of Millennials experience when consuming news. Constructive journalism is often propagated as a way to improve the well-being and engagement of readers. To test this, the current study investigated the effects of constructive news on emotions and online engagement. In an experiment, 20-40-year-old participants (n = 341) read a story containing constructive elements or not. Findings showed constructive news elicited lower levels of negative and higher levels of positive and inspirational emotional responses. Furthermore, reading constructive news partly affected readers' actual online behaviour: Millennials who read the constructive news 'liked' this news more often. These results suggest that constructive journalism might be a viable strategy to attract younger news users, especially when the news topic is relevant to their lives.
