Making the case for emotions | Eliza Anyangwe | 14 comments

How different would journalism look if we (the people who produce it - and especially those who care about impact) accepted that humans are emotional beings, not rational ones? Could we set The Fuller Project apart not just by what we cover but how our coverage makes you feel? In my latest takeover of Fuller's newsletter, I explore the power of emotion for social change. My starting point was two-fold: news avoidance and AI. The news avoider isn't someone I don't personally know and can't possibly relate to. The news avoider is me. I too feel rage, despair and powerlessness when I consume news media, particularly when I watch the news. The emotions elicited don't drive me to take action, far from it. Could journalism trigger different, more positive emotions, and still be effective or impactful? As for AI, I've been wondering: if machines trained on quality journalism can do a decent job of replicating quality journalism, then what can the humans bring to the party? All these questions are leading me to explore creativity as a vehicle for communication and connection. On that journey, I've been reading about the 'deficit model' which assumes that people do not act on something because they do not yet know enough or understand enough to act. And so the solution is to give them more information. It has been routinely critiqued for ignoring the socio-cultural or emotional reasons that underpin behaviour, and yet, it persists. As I started to think this through more deeply, an essay by Luba Kassova and wonderful conversations with Kumi Naidoo and Gabriella Gomez-Mont reassured me I'm on the right track (and you can get a snapshot of what all three have to say on this in the newsletter). But as a newsroom leader, I'm still unsure of what the many small choices are that we need to make today in order to produce work tomorrow where the emotional impact is to draw people in and send them out to be the change, rather than simply repel them. Is anyone else thinking about this?! I'd love to connect with like minds :) https://lnkd.in/dyTMu6-t p.s. Thank you to Adama Sanneh and the Moleskine Foundation team for having me at this year's Creativity Revival where I was surrounded by people who convinced me I wasn't barking up the wrong tree! | 14 comments on LinkedIn