Abstract

This study examined the potential influence of viewing emotions, expressed after viewing the news uploaded to YouTube, on news participation. Based on an experiment (2 × 2 factorial design) among journalism students (N = 84), this research elucidated the extent of emotional attachment and its influence on participatory news engagement. The experiment depends on showing or not showing the testimony of people's emotions (e.g., happiness, anger, sorrow) evoked by the news videos released on YouTube by Bangladeshi mainstream television channels. The findings revealed that participants are more likely to be emotionally attached to news videos carrying evidence of people's emotions than of news videos without emotional witnesses. In addition, the findings showed a strong influence of viewing emotions, evoked by the news videos, on online users' news engagement. Notably, this study found no evidence of gender-based differences in approaching emotional displays in the news videos and engaging in participatory news. The findings signify the importance of media portrayal of empathy-evoking evidence that would help people to be humanized about viewed issues and escalate them for public discussion through participatory news engagement.