Feeling the story: Background music’s effect in news podcasts

Abstract

Narrative news podcasts are a popular form of podcast that combine storytelling and background music to make entertaining and informative audio reports about events in the news. Narratives are known to influence consumers’ affect, feelings of transportation, and attitude about the story content, and the valence and arousal levels of background music can cause similar effects in listeners. The combined effect of narratives and music on listeners of narrative news podcasts is unknown but research suggests the effect may have differing effects on listener affect, attitude, and feeling of transportation, which together my make listeners more susceptible to the persuasive nature of narratives and cause them to make decisions based on misinformation. This study used a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects design to measure participant pre- and post-condition affect, post- condition transportation and post-condition attitude change. Participants listened to a podcast excerpt containing a narrative news script in either an economic benefit or environmental consequence framing combined with varying combinations of valence and arousal. The environmental consequence text, independent of background music, was most effective at influencing changes in participants’ affect, attitude, and feeling of transportation. No significant differences were found between groups in conditions containing background music. This study fills the gap in the literature and provides an anchor for future narrative news podcast studies.