Question

Bad news travels fast--when you watch the evening news or read the morning papers, it seems that things that get the most coverage are all tragedies like wars, earthquakes, floods, fires and murders.

This is the classic rule for mass media. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling,” Jonah Berger, a psychologist at University of Pennsylvania told The New York Times.

But with social media getting increasingly popular, information is now being spread in different ways, and researchers are discovering new rules--good news can actually spread faster and farther than disasters and other sad stories.

Berger and his colleague Katherine Milkman looked at thousands of articles on The New York Times’ website and analyzed the “most e-mailed” list for six months.

One of his findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list. Those stories aroused feelings of awe (敬畏) and made the readers want to share this positive emotion with others.

Besides science stories, readers were also found to be likely to share articles that were exciting or funny. “The more positive an article was, the more likely it was to be shared,” Berger wrote in his new book. “For example, stories about newcomers falling in love with New York City,” he writes, “tended to be shared more than the death of a popular zookeeper.”

But does all this good news actually make the audience feel better? Not necessarily.

According to a study by researchers at Harvard University, people tend to say more positive things about themselves when they’re talking to a bigger audience, rather than just one person, which helps explain all the perfect vacations that keep showing up on microblogs. This, researchers found, makes people think that life is unfair and that they’re less happy than their friends.

But no worries. There’s a quick and easy way to relieve the depression you get from viewing other people’s seemingly perfect lives--turn on the television and watch the news. There is always someone doing worse than you are.

1.Bad news covers most papers because .

A. the public care for reading tragedies

B. the public intend to express sympathy for victims

C. mass media want to attract the public’s attention

D. mass media appeal to the public to help victims

2.Which of the following might be e-mailed most according to Berger?

A. The perfect vacation of your friend

B. The story of a determined inventor

C. The death of a popular zookeeper

D. The flood hitting a small town

3.We can infer from the passage that .

A. bad news always makes people sad

B. people prefer to share bad news with a bigger audience

C. people can relieve the depression by reading good news

D. good news sometimes has negative influence

4.What would be the best title for the passage?

A. Good News Spreads Fast

B. Bad News Travels Fast

C. The Effect of Bad News

D. The Power of Good News

Answer 1

1.C

2.B

3.D

4.A

【解析】

试题分析：人们常说“好事不出门坏事传千里”。媒体报道火灾、洪水、地震等不幸的事件是为了得到观众的关注。随着社交媒体的逐渐流行，信息的传播方式也在发生着变化。研究人员发现，正面的消息比负面的传播得更快，传播范围也更广。

1.This is the classic rule for mass media. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling,””可知，大众媒体只是想得到人们的关注，他们不在乎观众的感受，故选C。

2.articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list. Those stories aroused feelings of awe (敬畏) and made the readers want to share this positive emotion with others.”可知，与科学有关的故事最有可能得到快速的传播，故选B。

3.But does all this good news actually make the audience feel better? Not necessarily.”和倒数第二段“This...makes people think that life is unfair and that they’re less happy than their friends”可知，并不是所有正面的新闻报道都能传递正面的能量，故选D。

4.nd researchers are discovering new rules--good news can actually spread faster and farther than disasters and other sad stories.”和下文可知，文章主要讲的是正面的新闻传播得更快，人们对科学、有趣的故事更感兴趣，故选A。

考点：社会类短文阅读