Aimed at overcoming disinformation, Arena is a research project led by Ca’ Foscari, Corriere della Sera and LSE. The project involves journalists, data analysts and activists who aim to “understand disinformation campaigns and reach audiences impacted by them.” 

Rationale: Politics and media are stuck in a spiral that incentivises divisive rhetoric, hyper-partisanship and disinformation. The people who benefit the most from this populist approach are politicians who are often supported by social media militias and homegrown publications with low editorial standards. Quality media end up reporting on these politicians as well using “clickable stories” because they struggle to survive financially.  

Findings: Arena researched different approaches to the “polarising subject” of migration. Corriere della Sera – a leading Italian newspaper – experimented with different story formats, while the LSE analysed reader responses. The analysis sought to establish what sort of content encouraged a “more civil debate, smoothed polarisation and enhanced trust towards accurate content.” 

It was noted that the number of migrants arriving in Italy decreased significantly in 2018, but the number of news stories increased – a rise thought to have been connected to the anti-immigrant policies of newly appointed deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini.

Investigating the response to these stories, Arena researchers found that a straightforward, impartial and unemotional approach led to more public trust and less criticism of the media, whereas human interest stories were more likely to prompt criticism and toxic language in response. However, hostile reactions were seen to soften when a sympathetic story concerned a single individual rather than a migrant group. News that referred to a solution to the perceived problem of migration, was also less likely to evoke a negative response. Data-driven approaches may elicit criticism, but often in a less toxic language. Also, video content produces a lower level of negativity possibly because moving images are seen as more reliable, or perhaps because people find it easier to engage with the format.

Relevance to Creative Journalism: An important point for our research is that human interest stories which aim to build empathy can have the opposite effect, prompting negative comments and criticism of the media platforms in which they appear. It may be that people feel such coverage is trying to manipulate them emotionally.

The study also considered what might happen if European media focused on migrants’ previous professions, or on the military conflicts behind migration, rather than cursorily classifying them by age and nationality.     

The research concludes that coverage of migration should navigate between anti-immigrant populism on the one hand and explicit sympathy on the other. Better to go for a straightforward, impartial approach which favours data over emotion; solutions-oriented journalism is welcomed more than what is seen as opinion-mongering.  

Finally, the study concluded that journalism should change the way it describes migrants because this description changes the way society sees them. This may well be true in part; nonetheless we should recall that people often read between the lines of what’s published. If they weren’t doing this, there wouldn’t be so much criticism when news media are (frequently) perceived to have got the story wrong.