Does Soft News Threaten Democracy?

In his paper “Doing Well and Doing Good,” Thomas Patterson examined the amount of soft news that has appeared in the media over time and the implications of the appearance of soft news. Patterson concludes that soft news has increased significantly in recent years and while it may inform some people who would otherwise not be informed, soft news is potentially harmful to the democratic process and has more costs than benefits for democracy and public knowledge (Patterson, 2000). These findings raise an important question: Should soft news be so prevalent in the mainstream news media if it has the potential to reduce people’s knowledge and hurt the democratic process? The mainstream news media’s answer to this question could fundamentally shape our understanding of the world, so it is worth considering.

Introduction to the Research Project

This blog is devoted to an assigned project for the Communication Studies 111 (section 006) class at the University of Michigan for the Winter 2012 semester.  The class meets once a week in North Quadrangle (pictured left).  North Quadrangle is the home of the Communication Studies program in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts.  I am working with three other group members on this project.

Our research question is “How has soft news developed in American non-print media in the past twenty years?” Scholars have observed a growth in the amount of soft news and a reduction in the amount of hard news in recent years. This trend could have profound implications for the already-changing landscape of journalism that is being shaped by the Internet and new media, so we wanted to learn more about the development of soft news in particular. We conduct a broad overview of the history of news in the past twenty years and note several key trends in the evolution of news during that time frame.

(Photo by AndrewHorne (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)