“Crisis Coverage Gap”: The Divide between Public Interest and Local News’ Facebook Posts about COVID-19 in the United States

Abstract

This study sought to theorize the crisis coverage gap, a new way of understanding the divide between public information needs and local digital news coverage during a crisis, through the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We used a three-wave panel survey of Americans (n ¼ 730) and analyses of local news posted on Facebook (n ¼ 2,632) at three points during the early pandemic to illustrate how the crisis coverage gap operates. Findings demonstrate a clear divide between the news the public wanted about the pandemic and what local media delivered on Facebook. Specifically, the media over-delivered economic and business news relative to public interest. It left the public wanting for news about how grocery stores were responding to the pandemic and for fact cheques ascertaining the truthfulness of information about the crisis. Earlier in the pandemic, coverage of schools' responses was in line with expectations based on how interested people were, but later they were over-covered, relative to interest.

An Examination of Affiliate and Network Television Channels’ Facebook Use for Addressing Audiences’ Critical Information Needs

“…Our results show that CIN content published on social media varies across the television outlets (Yan & Napoli, 2007; Ferguson & Greer, 2016) and audiences on social media engage differently with CIN posts that sometimes belong to the same category. This finding reiterates research which shows local audiences cannot be painted with one brush (Masullo et al, 2021). It is important to not just examine the amount of CIN content published by all local television and/or newspaper outlets but also the nature of the communities they serve.…”

“…A recent study of CIN-related posts from one local television station found similar results in terms of topic frequency in Facebook posts (Guo & Sun, 2020). Masullo et al's (2021) study on whether local news outlets provided their communities with the information they needed, especially during a crisis such as COVID, found that local media failed to provide their audiences with the information the latter wanted, often covering those topics far fewer times than necessary. Therefore, it may be worthwhile for local television stations to pay attention to all CIN-related topics versus just the few topics the newsrooms believe will do well in terms of audience engagement on Facebook.…”

“…They may use social platforms to disseminate their stories rather than interact with their readers and/or viewers (Hille & Bakker, 2013;Molyneux & Mourāo, 2019). While newsrooms in the early years may not have known what kind of news content their audiences look for on social media (Paulussen & D'heer, 2013), recent research shows there remains a gap between the information audiences indicate they want from their local news outlets -especially during a crisis-and the content local media provided them (Masullo et al, 2021). Napoli et al (2017) said local media's social media presence is an important criterion for assessing the quality of local journalism infrastructure and its CIN output.…”

“…Many news directors mention Facebook as their primary social platform for delivering content to not only their loyal viewers but also to attract new and younger audiences (Wenger & Papper, 2018) and increase audience engagement (Imre & Wenger, 2020). There is, however, a general disconnect between the information local news outlets—television and newspapers-- post on social media and what people prefer to see on these platforms (Masullo et al, 2021; Paulussen & D’heer, 2013). When newsrooms post content on social media, their posts sometimes contain broken or inaccurate hyperlinks and/or vague, generic messages that do not encourage audience engagement (Ware, 2018).…”

Perceptions of Partisanship in Local Television News

“…Interest in local news increased dramatically at the beginning of the pandemic and remained high in the following months (Kim, Wang, & Malthouse, 2021). During this period, local news outlets struggled to deliver the kinds of pandemic news that members of the public wanted (Masullo, Jennings, & Stroud, 2021). Under these circumstances, why do people choose a particular local television news broadcast to watch, and what are the impacts of this choice?…”