On this episode of The Open Mind, we’re delighted to welcome back the foremost expert on American political communication, Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford University Press has published her newest work, “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President – What We Don’t, Can’t and Do Know.” … The […] Read more »
Why Fears of Fake News Are Overhyped
After the shock of the 2016 presidential election, many Americans found psychological refuge in a simple explanation for why Donald Trump won: “fake news.” False or misleading information published by dubious for-profit websites had spread widely on Facebook, reaching millions of people in the final months of the campaign. This […] Read more »
Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative Voters Preferred Trump In 2016
The conventional wisdom is that a socially liberal, fiscally conservative independent presidential candidate — like, say, Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO, who is considering just such a run — poses a threat to Democrats in 2020 by potentially dividing the anti-Trump vote. But there’s another possibility: that Schultz, or […] Read more »
What Lessons Should the Media Learn From the 2016 Election?
In the Sunday edition of the New York Times, Frank Bruni offered an excellent summary of media failures regarding coverage of Donald Trump in 2016, and urged his colleagues not to make the same mistakes in 2020. Is it possible for the political media to follow this advice? And what […] Read more »
What do Democrats want in 2020? Someone new – and Biden. But definitely not Hillary
Democratic and independent voters are crystal clear about the candidate they’d be most excited to see in the 2020 presidential field: Someone entirely new. Oh, and also the most seasoned prospect. Asking voters their pick for president more than a year before the primaries begin typically doesn’t tell you much […] Read more »
Winning the Gender Wars
In the 2018 midterms, the women of this country delivered a severe rebuke to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The seeds were planted by the 2017 Women’s March, by many accounts the largest single-day demonstration in American history. Thousands of women subsequently decided to run for office, including […] Read more »