Do you ever
feel overwhelmed and powerless after watching the news? Does it make you
feel sad about the world, without much hope for its future? Take a breath – the
world is not as bad as the headlines would have you believe.
In You Are What You Read, campaigner and researcher Jodie Jackson helps us understand
how our current twenty-four-hour news cycle is produced, who decides what
stories are selected, why the news is mostly negative and what effect this has
on us as individuals and as a society.Combining the latest research from psychology, sociology and
the media, she builds a powerful case for including solutions in our news
narrative as an antidote to the negativity bias.
You
Are What You Read is not just a
book, it is a manifesto for a movement: it is not a call for us to ignore the
negative but rather a call to not ignore the positive. It asks us to change the way we consume
the news and shows us how, through our choices, we have the power to improve
our media diet, our mental health and just possibly the world.
Editorial Reviews
Review
The subject of media consumption is more timely than ever in the era of fake news and social media burnout. Jodie Jackson is an expert on the psychological and social impact of the news, speaking regularly at media conferences and universities. The book was supported at the crowdfunding stage by influential voices in the field: Steven Pinker, Ola Rosling (author of Factfulness and co-founder of Gapminder), David Bordstein (co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network), Jean Philip De Tender (Director Media at the European Broadcast Association) among others. For fans of Factfulness by Hans Rosling, The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. The author will be available for events around publication.
About the Author
Jodie Jackson is an author, researcher and campaigner, and a partner at The Constructive Journalism Project. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of East London where she investigated the psychological impact of the news, and she is a regular speaker at media conferences and universities. She lives in London. @jacksonjodie21
