Who Gets Covered? Ideological Extremity and News Coverage of Members of the U.S. Congress, 1993 to 2013

Wagner, Michael W.; Gruszczynski, Mike

doi:10.1177/1077699017702836

Cited by 35 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…And perhaps most importantly, mainstream news outlets have increasingly found themselves in competition with partisan news outlets for viewers and readers in the U.S. This creates heightened incentives to carry polarizing messages from extreme sources (Wagner and Gruszczynski, 2018;Padgett et al, 2019). In short, American political discourse is saturated with COVID-19 misinformation to a far greater extent than peer countries, and we anticipate that this will spill over into the Canadian social media space.…”

Section: The Us As a Super-spreader Of Covid-19 Misinformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

et al. 2021

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The COVID-19 pandemic has occurred alongside a worldwide infodemic where unprecedented levels of misinformation have contributed to widespread misconceptions about the novel coronavirus. Conspiracy theories, poorly sourced medical advice, and information trivializing the virus have ignored national borders and spread quickly. This information spread has occurred despite generally strong preferences for domestic national media and social media networks that tend to be geographically bounded. How, then, is (mis)information crossing borders so rapidly? Using social media and survey data, we evaluate the extent to which consumption and propagation patterns of domestic and international traditional news and social media can help inform theorizing about cross-national information spread. In a detailed case study of Canada, we employ a large multi-wave survey and a massive data set of Canadian Twitter users. We show that the majority of misinformation circulating on Twitter that is shared by Canadian accounts is retweeted from U.S.-based accounts. Moreover, exposure to U.S.-based media outlets is associated with COVID-19 misperceptions and increased exposure to U.S.-based information on Twitter is associated with an increased likelihood to post misinformation. We thus theorize and empirically identify a key globalizing infodemic pathway: disregard for national origin of social media posting.

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Section: The Us As a Super-spreader Of Covid-19 Misinformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

et al. 2021

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“…Results indicated ideologically polarized politicians (i.e. politicians with a track record of voting along partisan lines) receive more news coverage (Wagner & Gruszcynski, 2018). Suggesting, like in the social media context, that polarization benefits politicians who seek media attention.…”

Section: Media Contentsmentioning

confidence: 90%

The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review

Kubin

Sikorski

2021

Annals of the International Communication Association

225

106

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Rising political polarization is, in part, attributed to the fragmentation of news media and the spread of misinformation on social media. Previous reviews have yet to assess the full breadth of research on media and polarization. We systematically examine 94 articles (121 studies) that assess the role of (social) media in shaping political polarization. Using quantitative and qualitative approaches, we find an increase in research over the past 10 years and consistently find that pro-attitudinal media exacerbates polarization. We find a hyperfocus on analyses of Twitter and American samples and a lack of research exploring ways (social) media can depolarize. Additionally, we find ideological and affective polarization are not clearly defined, nor consistently measured. Recommendations for future research are provided.

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“…Moreover, as citizens' reliance on national news presumably increases with the decline of local sources of news, the character of the news coverage of political elites is likely to differ in ways that could have important consequences for mass polarization. For instance, research indicates that national sources of news, such as the New York Times, broadcast television news, and cable television news, provide greater coverage of more ideologically extreme elected officials relative to more moderate officials (Padgett, Dunaway, and Darr 2019;Wagner and Gruszczynski 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local News, Information, and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections

Moskowitz

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Has the decline in traditional sources of local news contributed to the nationalization of U.S. elections? I hypothesize that local news coverage mitigates nationalization by providing voters with information that allows them to assess down-ballot candidates separately from their national, partisan assessment. The geography of media markets places some voters in a neighboring state’s market and others in in-state markets. I demonstrate that residents of in-state markets have access to vastly more local television news coverage of their governor and U.S. senators, and this increased coverage translates into greater knowledge of these officeholders. Further, access to in-state television news substantially increases split-ticket voting in gubernatorial and senatorial races. Supplementary analyses provide strong evidence that the estimated effects are not the result of unobserved differences between residents of in-state and out-of-state media markets. These results imply that local news coverage attenuates the nationalization of elections even in the present polarized context.

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Who Gets Covered? Ideological Extremity and News Coverage of Members of the U.S. Congress, 1993 to 2013

Cited by 35 publications

References 43 publications

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review

Local News, Information, and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections

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