Public lacks sources of good news

New research has highlighted the lack of positive news sources available to the public.

Just a fifth of the population have heard positive news about charities (22%), universities or colleges (18%) and local councils (17%) in the last three months.

According to Sapio Research, the picture for social enterprises (13%) and trade unions (10%) is even worse. In all, 54% have not heard any positive news about these organisations.

To address this problem, social enterprise Campaign Collective launched a new media outlet – The Rooftop –  a month ago to provide the public with a daily dose of positive news.

In its first four weeks, The Rooftop has seen more than 436,000 content views of stories about the positive impact of social enterprises, great charity campaigns, exciting developments from local government, trade union victories in the workplace and ground-breaking research by universities.

The website and social channels are designed to help charities and campaigners connect with the general public and get their positive stories heard in what is often a negative mainstream media climate.

Simon Francis, Founder Member of Campaign Collective which funds The Rooftop, said:

This new research highlights the scale of the problem we want The Rooftop to address.

We knew that there was a dearth of positive news in mainstream media, but it’s even more worrying that social media and other marketing isn’t filling this void.

The Rooftop is providing a daily dose of positive news to the public and the initial reaction from readers has been amazing.

Jane Hales, Managing Director of Sapio Research, commented:

In the work we do for other charities and campaigns, we know how important it is to generate positive news and this research demonstrates just how important it is to have a site like The Rooftop to spread positive news direct to the public.

The Rooftop soft-launched at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Edinburgh on 14 September and is building up an initial audience before a formal launch later in 2018. Campaigners and PRs can submit their ‘news worth shouting about’ (all of which must have an accompanying quality picture) to editor [at] therooftop [dot] news.

The Rooftop’s branding was developed by Open Agency and the website by Karen Stewart.