Solutions Journalism

As audiences increasingly avoid negative news, journalists are being called upon to tell optimistic stories about the future. This book explores emerging solutions reporting practices while arguing for a journalism based on hope psychology and a pluralist conception of leadership and expertise.

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As audiences avoid negative news and public risk perceptions fracture across polarized media ecologies, journalists are being called upon to tell engaging and optimistic stories about the future. Consequently, solutions journalism has moved from the margins to the global mainstream, resulting in a plurality of new solutions-focused practices. Solutions Journalism: News at the Intersection of Hope, Leadership, and Expertise explores the professional dynamics and tensions concerning solutions journalism, clarifies these related practices and, in so doing, provides scholars and journalists with a nuanced appreciation of the opportunities and liabilities of reporting solutions. Drawing upon a year-long study of journalism in Tasmania, Bill Dodd develops a tripartite theory of solutions journalism at the intersection of three core concepts: hope, leadership, and expertise. In Australia’s lagging southernmost province, where development propositions have sparked global protest movements, ‘New Tasmania’ represented a newly optimistic spirit of bipartisanship. Yet, in this book, a close reading of solutions-focused discourse reveals deeper asymmetries regarding whose voices are routinely privileged in framing the future. On this basis, the book argues for a solutions journalism founded on a nuanced understanding of hope and a plurality of community leaders and practical expertise.