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Soft News is defined as information that is primarily entertaining or personally useful. Soft news is often compared to hard news, which John Zaller defines as the "coverage of breaking events involving top leaders, major issues, or significant disruptions in the routines of daily life." While the main purposes of both hard and soft news are to inform the public, the two differ from one another in both the information contained within them and the methods that are used to present that information. Communicated through forms of soft media, soft news is usually contained in outlets that primarily serve as sources of entertainment, such as television programs, magazines, or print articles.

(Background)

A byproduct of soft media is referred to as infotainment, which is the combination of information and entertainment.

(Effects)

The average American consumes more than 5 hours of television per day. During this time, they are exposed to a variety of news and information that either directly (hard news) or indirectly (soft news) focuses on politics, foreign affairs, and policy.

Soft media has been shown to increase a candidate’s likability, which has a greater appeal to those people who are generally politically uninvolved than a candidate’s political policies do.

In a study examining the effects of soft news consumption on voting behaviors, the phenomenon known as the Oprah Effect was established, which indicated that the intake of soft news has a positive effect on patterns of voting consistency in people who are otherwise politically unaware.