… At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States — about half those […] Read more »
Americans Still Prefer Watching to Reading the News – and Mostly Still Through Television
Americans continue to prefer watching the news rather than reading or listening to it, and their viewing loyalties have yet to migrate fully to the web. Instead, the majority of U.S. adults who prefer to watch the news opt for television as their primary news platform, according to a new […] Read more »
The big lessons of political advertising in 2018
Screen shot of Beto O’Rourke’s Facebook ad, 2018. Facebook Erika Franklin Fowler, Wesleyan University; Michael Franz, Bowdoin College, and Travis N. Ridout, Washington State University The 2018 midterm elections are in the books, the winners have been declared and the 30-second attack ads are – finally – over. As co-directors […] Read more »
Finding common ground in rating media
Amid the debate now raging in Washington over whether online news is biased or fake, consider this: What do NationalReview.com, the website of the magazine founded by conservative icon William F. Buckley, and the Nation.com, the Internet arm of the liberal magazine founded by abolitionists in 1865, have in common? […] Read more »
How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump
Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office. Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,” “ridiculous,” […] Read more »
If you’ve lost hope in American democracy, here’s some good news
… In the modern era, the relationship between elected officials and their constituents has become critically strained. President Abraham Lincoln held office hours for constituents. That seems more than a little quaint today. … Carefully designed online platforms can more effectively embed elections in ongoing conversations about public policy and […] Read more »