NewsBeat

August 2018 NewsBeat 17 "The Decline of Local News and Its Effects: New Evidence from Longitudinal Data" Summary: This paper suggests an association between the decline of local news and citizen engagement in politics. The authors analyzed over 10,000 stories about U.S. House campaigns during the 2010 and 2014 elections. They find declines in both volume and substance of campaign coverage between the two election years, as measured by the number of stories published, the percentage of stories mentioning both candidates, the number of mentions of specific issues and the number of references to candidates' traits. The researchers then looked at survey data collected from the same set of 9,500 respondents before each of the two elections. The survey tested whether respondents could "place the Democratic candidate to the left of the Republican on an ideological scale," rate their House incumbent and share their vote intention. The authors compared these responses to shifts in coverage. They found that increases in coverage were associated with improved political knowledge and decreases in coverage were associated with decreases in political engagement. "As Local News Goes, So Goes Citizen Engaement: Media, Knowledge, and Participation in US House Elections" Summary: This study uses methods similar to those described above to analyze the 2010 U.S. House midterm elections. The analysis suggests that hotly contested districts and districts served by smaller news outlets receive more coverage with more substance than districts with uncompetitive races and larger outlets. Looking at the relationship between this news data and citizen responses to a survey that gauges political engagement, they found people in districts with less coverage were less likely to vote, share opinions about the candidates running and provide evaluations of their current representatives. The finding held regardless of political awareness levels, "indicating that the deleterious consequences of a decline in local coverage are widespread, not restricted to the least attentive citizens." "Newspaper Markets and Municipal Politics: How Audience and Congruence Increase Turnout in Local Elections" Summary: This study looks at links between the local media environment and turnout in local elections in Switzerland. The paper finds that particular features of the newspaper market are associated with turnout. These factors are newspaper audience and congruence. Newspaper audience is "the share of newspaper readers in the municipal population." Newspaper congruence is a measure of the paper's localization of their content. The researchers looked at circulation data for 384 municipalities in the study. They found that areas with higher newspaper penetration and localized content have higher turnout in municipal elections. "Newspaper and Political Accountability: Evidence from Japan" Summary: This study looks at associations between local and national newspapers and political accountability, as measured by local public works spending. "Using circulation data for 105 Japanese newspapers, I find that increases in the market share of locally circulating newspapers within a prefecture are associated with decreases in public works spending, particularly expenditures on local governments' discretionary projects." The author interprets this as an improvement in political accountability. The study also looks at the role of national news coverage of public works spending, and finds that as it increases, the influence of local newspapers on spending also rises. "Dead Newspapers and Citizens' Civic Engagement" Summary: This study presents links between newspaper closures in Seattle and Denver and declines in civic engagement among residents. The study looks at Census data from 2008 and 2009, comparing the civic engagement of citizens in areas that lost a newspaper the following year with people in cities that did not. Civic engagement was measured by responses to questions about contact with public officials, membership in civic organizations and more. The magnitude of the decline in civic engagement in Seattle and Denver was larger than the national trend, and comparison cities with similar qualities "showed little evidence of decline." This suggests that measurement issues or other, national variables like political or economic conditions do not explain this variation.

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