From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Sensationalism \Sen*sa"tion*al*ism\, noun
1. (Metaph.) The doctrine held by Condillac, and by some ascribed to Locke, that our ideas originate solely in sensation, and consist of sensations transformed; sensualism; -- opposed to {intuitionalism}, and {rationalism}.
2. The practice or methods of sensational writing or speaking; as, the sensationalism of a novel.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: subject matter that is calculated to excite and please vulgar tastes
2: the journalistic use of subject matter that appeals to vulgar tastes; "the tabloids relied on sensationalism to maintain their circulation" [syn: {luridness}]
3: (philosophy) the ethical doctrine that feeling is the only criterion for what is good [syn: {sensualism}]
4: (philosophy) the doctrine that knowledge derives from experience [syn: {empiricism}, {empiricist philosophy}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
148 Moby Thesaurus words for "sensationalism": Barnumism, Thespian art, affectation, aggrandizement, amateur theatricals, amplification, ballyhoo, bedizenment, big talk, blatancy, blood and thunder, blowing up, brazenness, burlesque, caricature, colorfulness, convolution, crudeness, dash, dazzle, dazzlingness, demonstrativeness, dilatation, dilation, dramatic art, dramatic form, dramatic irony, dramatic stroke, dramatic structure, dramaticism, dramatics, dramatism, dramaturgy, emotional appeal, emotionalism, emotionality, emotionalization, emotionalizing, emotiveness, emotivity, enhancement, enlargement, exaggerating, exaggeration, excess, exorbitance, expansion, extravagance, extravaganza, extravagation, extreme, flagrancy, flamboyance, flashiness, flatulence, flatulency, fulsomeness, gaiety, garishness, gaudery, gaudiness, glare, glitter, gorgeousness, grandiloquence, grandioseness, grandiosity, heightening, high-flown diction, histrionics, histrionism, huckstering, human interest, hyperbole, hyperbolism, inflatedness, inflation, inordinacy, jauntiness, jazziness, lexiphanicism, loftiness, loudness, love interest, luridness, magnification, magniloquence, making scenes, melodrama, melodramatics, mere rhetoric, meretriciousness, nonrationalness, obtrusiveness, orotundity, ostentation, ostentatious complexity, overemphasis, overestimation, overkill, overstatement, panache, platitudinous ponderosity, play construction, polysyllabic profundity, pomposity, pompous prolixity, pompousness, pontification, pretension, pretentiousness, prodigality, profuseness, prose run mad, puffery, puffing up, rhetoric, rhetoricalness, sententiousness, shamelessness, showiness, sportiness, staginess, stiltedness, stretching, superlative, swelling utterance, swollen phrase, swollenness, tall talk, tawdriness, theatricalism, theatricality, theatricals, theatricism, theatrics, tortuosity, tortuousness, touting, travesty, tumidity, tumidness, turgescence, turgidity, unreasoningness, visceralness, vulgarness, yellow journalism
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