Beyond the Feel-Good Factor

Abstract

The promise of public journalism is that it makes politics “go well.” However, empirical evaluation of it has been fragmentary. The introduction of a new electoral system in New Zealand saw the print media experiment with the new model. In our study, we examined the journalistic interpretation of election campaign issues under the new circumstances and compared conventional coverage with the use of public journalism. The findings reveal that public journalism provided readers with a different, more constructive framing of political news.