随着风险社会的到来，传统的新闻伦理和实践规范面临新的挑战，“情感转向”成为数字新闻业最为突出的特征。当灾害发生时，高度情感化的报道能够唤醒公众对远方苦难的关注，形成“集体应对”的社会心理模式。相较基于内容分析法的新闻框架研究路径，对情感框架及其传播效果的研究并没有得到应有的重视。尤其在社交媒体时代，如何理解新闻报道中的情感元素使用策略？这些元素是否能与用户的个人经历和情感产生共鸣？情感框架的运用对受众的行为意图有何影响？这些问题都有待进一步的回答。

因此，本研究所要探讨的议题是，在自然灾害新闻中，新闻的叙事方式、用户评论的情感倾向以及个人的灾难经历，如何以情感框架的形式影响到受众的行为意图。从“情感性的策略仪式”出发，本文设计了一个2（情感诉求：有，无）×2（评论倾向：积极，消极）的被试间实验，并将个人是否有灾难经历作为调节变量纳入分析。研究共计招募141名有效被试，并按照实验要求随机分配到4个组别。被试在阅读新闻材料后回答相关问题，以报告自己的行为意图。

研究得到了4个较为可靠的实证结论。第一，情感诉求对被试的亲社会行为意图和利他行为意图具有显著影响。相较于阅读不含情感诉求的新闻，被试在阅读含有情感诉求新闻后会产生更加显著的亲社会行为意图和利他行为意图。第二，用户评论的情感倾向对受众的亲社会行为意图、利他行为意图和在线传播意图具有显著影响。相较于阅读消极评论，阅读带有积极评论的新闻报道，会显著增强被试的行为意图。第三，情感诉求和评论倾向对受众的亲社会行为意图有显著的交互作用。当用户评论为消极倾向时，含有情感诉求的新闻比不含情感诉求的新闻更能够引起显著的亲社会行为意图。第四，灾难经历在评论倾向对亲社会行为意图的影响过程中发挥了调节作用。当用户评论为消极时，有灾难经历的被试和无灾难经历的被试在亲社会行为意图上均处于较低水平，二者差异不显著。但是，当用户评论为积极时，有灾难经历的被试比没有灾难经历的被试表现出了更加显著的亲社会行为意图。

综上所述，对受众框架和情感新闻业的关注，不仅能够为框架分析提供新的理论视角和研究议题，而且为数字新闻业的实践规范和社交媒体的内容生态建设提供了具体的行动指南。在对自然灾害的报道中，对受灾者的关注和描述有利于唤起受众“以他人为导向”的行动意图，形成团结友好的线上线下互助氛围。此外，对评论倾向的分析也揭示了用户评论对新闻内容和受众行为意图的强大影响，提醒媒体组织、社交平台和监管部门应当加强对评论区生态建设的关注，以善意友好的评论氛围促成公众对社会事务的关注和讨论，从而构建强有力的社会信念和社会行动。

With the advent of the risk society, traditional journalistic ethics and practice norms face new challenges, making the “emotional turn” the most prominent feature of digital journalism. When a disaster occurs, highly emotional coverages can arouse the public’s attention to the suffering in the distance and form a social psychological model of “collective coping.” Compared with the research path of news framing based on content analysis, the research on emotional framing and its communication effect has yet to receive due attention. Especially in the age of social media, how to understand the emotional element of news reporting? Do these elements interact with users? How does the use of emotional framing affect audiences’ behavioral intentions? These questions remain to be answered further.

Therefore, the topic of this study is how, in natural disaster news, the narrative style of media coverage, the valence of user comments, and personal disaster experience affect the audience’s behavioral intentions in the form of emotional framings. Starting from “the strategic ritual of emotionality,” this paper designed a 2 (emotional appeal: present vs. absent) × (comment valence: positive vs. negative) experiment among subjects and included disaster experience as a moderating variable in the analysis. One hundred forty-one valid subjects were recruited for the study and allocated to 4 groups according to the experimental requirements. After reading the news materials, the subjects answered relevant questions to report their behavioral intentions.

The research has obtained four reliable empirical conclusions. First, emotional appeal has a significant impact on the prosocial and altruistic behavioral intentions of the subjects. Compared with reading news without emotional appeal, subjects will have more significant prosocial and altruistic behavior intentions after reading the news with emotional appeal. Second, user reviews substantially impact audiences’ prosocial behavior intentions, altruistic behavior intentions, and online communication intentions. Compared with reading negative comments, reading news with positive comments significantly enhanced participants’ behavioral intentions. Third, emotional appeals and comment valence significantly interact with audiences’ prosocial behavioral intentions. When users comment negatively, news with an emotional appeal can induce more significant prosocial behavior intention than news without an emotional appeal. Fourth, disaster experience moderated in comment valence’s influence on prosocial behavior intention. When the user comments are negative, the subjects with disaster experience and those without disaster experience are at a lower level of prosocial behavior intention, and the difference between the two is not significant. When the user comments are positive, the subjects with disaster experience show more significant prosocial behavioral intentions than those without disaster experience.

In general, the focus on the audience’s personal frame and emotional journalism can provide new theoretical perspectives and research topics for frame research and offer specific action guidelines for the practice of digital journalism and the construction of social media content ecology. In the reporting of natural disasters, the attention and description of the victims are conducive to arousing the audience’s “other-oriented” action intention and forming solidarity and friendship online and offline through mutual assistance behavior. In addition, the analysis of comment valence also reveals the powerful influence of user comments on news content and audience attitudes, reminding media organizations, social platforms, and regulatory authorities to pay more attention to the ecological construction of comment areas and promote public opinion on concern and discussion of social affairs, to build strong social beliefs and social actions.