Paper Cuts: How Reporting Resources Affect Political News Coverage

Peterson, Erik

doi:10.1111/ajps.12560

Cited by 44 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…However, many other factors (McCollough, Crowell, and Napoli 2017), e.g. economic issues (Peterson 2021), are at play in determining what local news outlets choose to cover. For example, Figure 1 shows that coverage of COVID was not equally distributed over time-on average, local newspaper agencies shifted their attention away from COVID as time progressed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local News Online and COVID in the U.S.: Relationships among Coverage, Cases, Deaths, and Audience

Joseph¹,

Horne²,

Green³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We present analyses from a real-time information monitoring system of online local news in the U.S. We study relationships among online local news coverage of COVID, cases and deaths in an area, and properties of local news outlets and their audiences. Our analysis relies on a unique dataset of the online content of over 300 local news outlets, encompassing over 750,000 articles over a period of 10 months spanning April 2020 to February 2021. We find that the rate of COVID coverage over time by local news outlets was primarily associated with death rates at the national level, but that this effect dissipated over the course of the pandemic as news about COVID was steadily displaced by sociopolitical events, like the 2020 U.S. elections. We also find that both the volume and content of COVID coverage differed depending on local politics, and outlet audience size, as well as evidence that more vulnerable populations received less pandemic-related news.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local News Online and COVID in the U.S.: Relationships among Coverage, Cases, Deaths, and Audience

Joseph¹,

Horne²,

Green³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Local newspapers are in decline in the US, with falling readership and decreasing levels of newsroom personnel (Hayes and Lawless 2017; Peterson 2017; Pew Research Center 2016). Given the importance of news coverage in driving citizen engagement in politics and in allowing citizens to hold their elected officials accountable (Hayes and Lawless 2015; Hopkins and Pettingill 2015; Shaker 2014; Snyder and Strömberg 2010), this trend is worrisome.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Local News and National Politics

Martin¹,

2019

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The level of journalistic resources dedicated to coverage of local politics is in a long-term decline in the US news media, with readership shifting to national outlets. We investigate whether this trend is demand- or supply-driven, exploiting a recent wave of local television station acquisitions by a conglomerate owner. Using extensive data on local news programming and viewership, we find that the ownership change led to (1) substantial increases in coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics, (2) a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage, and (3) a small decrease in viewership, all relative to the changes at other news programs airing in the same media markets. These results suggest a substantial supply-side role in the trends toward nationalization and polarization of politics news, with negative implications for accountability of local elected officials and mass polarization.

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“…It may also be that coverage of their Congressional candidates has simply declined (Snyder and Strömberg 2010). While we do not believe that media market changes pose a great threat to our estimates, given that nearly all of this change occurred after our sample period (e.g., Peterson 2017), we nonetheless want to assuage concerns. To this end, in the online supporting information, we estimate models that control for the local number and circulation of newspapers (Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson 2014) as well as the “localness” of broader political discourse.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 97%

Party Government and Political Information

Fortunato

Stevenson

2020

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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We argue that the kind of political information voters should possess varies contextually in response to relevant political processes. Focusing on the partisan organization of legislatures, we derive hypotheses for what the typical American should know about politics at the national and state level and test these hypotheses in two studies. The first documents a dramatic change in American political knowledge at the national level in response to polarization—the replacement of individually oriented information with partisan information. While voters’ ability to identify the candidates running to represent them in Congress has been cut in half, their ability to rank order the parties ideologically has nearly doubled. The second study provides evidence that voters are better able to identify the majority party in their state legislature where partisan control of the legislative agenda and roll‐call voting is stronger. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.

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Paper Cuts: How Reporting Resources Affect Political News Coverage

Cited by 44 publications

References 53 publications

Local News Online and COVID in the U.S.: Relationships among Coverage, Cases, Deaths, and Audience

Local News Online and COVID in the U.S.: Relationships among Coverage, Cases, Deaths, and Audience

Local News and National Politics

Party Government and Political Information

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