Books
Storefront Campaigning (2024)
Cambridge University Press: Elements in Campaigns and Elections
Abstract
Since Barack Obama's historic and unprecedented field operations in 2008 and 2012, campaigns have centralized their voter contact operations within field offices: storefronts rented in strategically chosen communities. 2020 upended that model: Joe Biden won the election without any offices (due to covid-19), while Donald Trump's campaign opened over 300. Using two decades of data on office locations and interviews with campaign staffers, we show how the strategy and impact of local field offices changed over the past 20 years, and assess whether future campaigns will invest in offices again — or if the rebirth of storefront campaigning is over.
Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization (2021)
Cambridge University Press: Elements in Politics and Communication
Abstract
Local newspapers can hold back the rising tide of political division in America by turning away from the partisan battles in Washington and focusing their opinion page on local issues. When a local newspaper in California dropped national politics from its opinion page, the resulting space filled with local writers and issues. We use a pre-registered analysis plan to show that after this quasi-experiment, politically engaged people did not feel as far apart from members of the opposing party, compared to those in a similar community whose newspaper did not change.
Press Coverage
Special Issue Editor
Media Policy for an Informed Citizenry: Revisiting the Information Needs of Communities for Democracy in Crisis (2023)
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2023
Abstract
This volume revisits and updates a call made by scholars in the early 2010s for public policy to respond to the market failure of local news. Organized into four parts — policy, supply, demand, and adaptation — this volume is committed to the proposition that people need information about their communities in order to navigate everyday life, and that those information needs are inextricably intertwined with other basic necessities like sustenance, transportation, housing, health, and safety.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Breaking new ground: Field office strategies in the 2024 presidential election
Abstract
We use original data on the 2024 election to show that the Trump and Harris campaigns dramatically reduced their investments in physical field offices relative to 2008, 2012, and 2016. Analyses of the determinants of field office placement reveal notable departures from prior cycles.
How the engagement journalism movement is changing political news content: An applied-research study
Abstract
Analyzing a large dataset of political stories published by journalists in training programs, we employed both quantitative and qualitative techniques to find significant differences between 2018, 2020, and 2022 political coverage: fewer horse-race (game) framed stories, more content considered to be "engaged," more transparent stories, and somewhat of a boost in solutions-oriented content.
Can Americans' trust in local news be trusted? The emergence, sources, and implications of the local news trust advantage
Abstract
We find unfamiliar news outlets are trusted more when they have a local cue in their name. In surveys where people evaluate digital sources covering their community, this heuristic leads the public to trust unreliable information providers that signal a local focus more than high-quality sources that do not.
Leaving a legacy: Shifting media use and American democratic attitudes
Abstract
We use a three-wave panel survey from 2012–2014 to assess the relationship between changes in self-reported news diets and opinions about American elections and democracy. Switching out of local newspapers is associated with a significant decrease in faith in elections but does not appear to influence support for the broader U.S. system of government.
Scrolling headlines and clicking stories: Content differences and implications associated with increased scrollability of news
Abstract
In this study, we use a replica newsfeed to track the stories participants scroll by and click on (N = 1,051), and complement this with a content analysis of the headlines and stories. We find that headlines are more negative in tone compared to stories, and people are more likely to click on negative stories. With the exception of affective polarization, we find little difference between those who scroll and those who click across a variety of political behaviors.
How sticky is pink slime? Assessing the credibility of deceptive local media
Abstract
I use a survey experiment to assess how readers respond to the same headline delivered to them as a fake newspaper, a fake website, or a real television station. Respondents rated the fake local newspaper as less credible than a real television station or a fake local website, but they rated fake local websites as credibly as real local television.
Should campaigns respond to electability arguments?
Abstract
In our experiments, a Democratic candidate is described as viable in the primary but unelectable in the runoff, and Democratic voters are encouraged to strategically vote for a more acceptable Republican. We find that when respondents see a campaign respond to an argument against their electability, it significantly improves perceptions of that candidate's electability.
Partisan media effects beyond one-shot experimental designs
Abstract
We find that sustained exposure to a feed that features out-party news media attenuates partisans' beliefs that Fox News is unfair, but not MSNBC. Unexpectedly, repeated exposure to in-party news also increased partisans' beliefs that Fox News is unfair. Our results update our understanding of media hostility in an online news environment characterized by a diversity of outlets.
Gubernatorial elections change demand for local newspapers
Abstract
We analyze partisan and non-partisan newspapers in Virginia and New Jersey during their off-cycle gubernatorial elections from 1934–2007. We replicate prior work and find that the relative readership of newspapers associated with the winning party declines after the gubernatorial election.
Seeing Spanish: The effects of language-based media choices on resentment and belonging
Abstract
We find that seeing articles about non-immigration politics in Spanish, as an option next to English articles, significantly raises racial resentment towards Hispanics among White Democrats. Among Spanish-speaking Latinos, seeing a political news article option in Spanish increases feelings of inclusion and belonging, even when it is not about a racialized issue like immigration.
Abandoning the ground game? Field organization in the 2016 elections
Abstract
Using original data on the locations of campaign field offices in 2016, I show that there was less field investment on both sides than in 2012; field office placement was less strategically aggressive; there was less self-reported voter contact in areas with field offices; and smaller estimated effects of a local field presence than in previous elections.
As seen on TV? How gatekeeping makes the U.S. House seem more extreme
Abstract
When we model on-air statements by members of Congress as a function of legislator and institutional characteristics, we reveal a gatekeeping function that vastly overrepresents extreme partisans on both sides of the aisle, for network and cable outlets alike. Gatekeeping processes reflect structural-economic biases towards extreme and conflictual content rather than network-specific partisan biases.
Who'll stop the rain? Repeated disasters and attitudes towards government
Abstract
We use an original survey of Louisianans to assess the role of Katrina experience in performance assessments of FEMA and the Louisiana state government after the 2016 floods. We find a significant negative relationship: flood aid applicants in 2016 rated state government much lower, but only if they also applied for Katrina aid in 2005.
Crime news effects and democratic accountability: Experimental evidence from repeated exposure in a multi-week online panel
Abstract
We experimentally test how leader approval changes when crime loses prominence in news for a sustained period. We find causal evidence that reducing crime news raises presidential approval and depresses problem importance for crime.
Collision with collusion: Partisan reaction to the Trump-Russia scandal
Abstract
We find that Republicans randomly assigned to see more headlines about a presidential scandal reacted more negatively than Democrats or Independents, rating President Trump's performance lower and expressing more negative emotions about him. Intense media focus on a story can alter partisans' evaluations of politicians by shifting the balance of headlines.
Earning Iowa: Local newspapers and the invisible primary
Abstract
Can presidential candidates influence their coverage in Iowa's smaller local newspapers during the months leading up to the caucuses? I use an original dataset of campaign press releases and local newspaper coverage to show that press releases were used primarily for information dissemination in Iowa in 2015–16, while small, weekly community newspapers hardly covered the campaign.
Newspaper closures polarize voting behavior
Abstract
We assess the impact of newspaper closure on polarized voting, using genetic matching to compare counties that are statistically similar on the observables but for the loss of a local newspaper. We identify a small but significant causal decrease in split-ticket voting in presidential and senatorial elections in these matched communities: in areas where a newspaper closes, split-ticket voting decreases by 1.9 percent.
Winner of the AEJMC Lynda Lee Kaid Award — best published paper in political communication, 2018
Checking facts and fighting back: Why journalists should defend their profession
Abstract
A five-day field experiment manipulated whether an online news portal included fact check stories and opinion pieces defending journalism. We found that fact checking was beneficial in terms of three democratically desirable outcomes — media trust, epistemic political efficacy, and future news use intent — only when stories defending journalism were present.
Resurgent mass partisanship revisited: The role of media choice in clarifying elite ideology
Abstract
We examine whether cable news choice shapes respondents' ability to correctly identify Democrats as the more liberal party, and Republicans as more conservative. Using cross-sectional and panel data, we find that partisan news consumers — particularly those watching Fox News — are better able to identify the positions and ideologies of partisan elites.
Reports from the field: Earned local media in presidential campaigns
Abstract
Campaigns attract attention from local media by appealing to the news values of proximity and conflict. I find that candidates receive more stories in the local press in areas where they establish a presence. By subsidizing locally framed content, campaigns can increase their local earned media, with larger effects in competitive states and areas without investments in previous elections.
Presence to press: How campaigns earn local media
Abstract
I employ an original data set of newspaper content and campaign investment from the 2004 and 2008 elections. I utilize a within-state matched-pairs design of newspapers from the state of Florida and a detailed content analysis of stories from 21 randomly selected days from each election cycle. I find that regional campaign presence generates positive earned media, but only in smaller newspapers.
Relying on the ground game: The placement and effects of campaign field offices
Abstract
We develop a theoretical argument about where candidates will locate field offices, and test our argument using data from recent elections. We also show that these field offices increase county-level vote share by approximately 1%, netting Obama approximately 275,000 additional votes in the 2008 election.
Book Reviews
Review of News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism by Nikki Usher. New York: Columbia University Press. Journal of Communication, 2021.
Review of Surprising News: How the Media Affect — And Do Not Affect — Politics by Kenneth Newton. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Political Studies Quarterly, 2020.
Review of Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan Reasoning and Promotes Democratic Accountability by Kevin Arceneaux and Ryan Vander Wielen. New York: Cambridge University Press. Public Opinion Quarterly, 2018.
Under Review
The Politics of Local Journalism: Building Democracy through News Practice. Book proposal submitted. With Sue Robinson.
Assessing the effectiveness of civic local journalism training. With Sue Robinson. Revised and resubmitted.
Conjoint experiments in cooperative context. Under review.
Working Papers
Locally sourced? Asymmetric partisan responses to federalism cues.