Nathan Hackett / Who’d a Thunk It: Bad News Makes People Sad, Wall Street Journal

Nathan Hackett was asked to illustrate this article by Peter Hausle for the Wall Street Journal and his mock disbelief at the results of a study concluding that reading bad news can lead to unhappiness.

Hausle sarcastically picks apart the sociological study with his own relationship with the media and the current state of affairs. The phenomena of self-destructive ‘doom-scrolling’ he argues is already recognised by everybody and you needn’t an expert to tell you.

Nathan had to balance the helplessness and despair in reading the news with the mocking tone employed in the writing. As a solution, the subject matter of misery was tempered by the focal exaggerated cartoon of a man scrolling on their phone while under the scrutiny of the scientists studying his anguish.

Art direction by Alice Cheung