In the last few years there have been a lot of essays on the relationship
between news stories and cognitive processes. Empirical studies are,
however, less common. The analysis presented in the book entitled
“NotÃcias do Fantástico†(Fantastic news stories) by Luiz G. Motta (a senior
Brazilian journalism researcher) is an exception. Taking 40 especially-
selected soft news stories from an original sample of 350 dispatches
that report bizarre events, the author conducted an interpretive analysis
of the news stories as “language gamesâ€.
