Affective Storytelling for Video News: Introducing and Testing Batman Affective Structure in the Age of Streaming

The transition from traditional flow television to streaming services has created a media landscape in which traditional news outlets are in intense competition with entertainment content. This paper argues for optimizing news for streaming through the affective structure of news narration. We compared flow TV news with a novel narrative structure, the Batman Affective Structure (BAS). The BAS strategically places an emotional peak at the news message's start and one at the end to enhance emotional impact and attention. In an experiment, six real news videos from major Danish broadcasters were re-edited by professionals to align with the BAS. Viewer responses were measured using skin conductance for arousal and self-reported assessments for arousal, attention, and news appreciation. The results showed that the BAS elicited higher physiological arousal and adhered to the expected double-peak arousal pattern, while flow TV news followed an unexpected s-shaped pattern. Additionally, media habits played a moderating role, with the BAS performing the best among viewers with high media use but low news interest, a group that holds great potential for increased news exposure. This study highlights the potential for the BAS to help news adapt to the challenges of the streaming era.