An increasingly popular tactic challenges conventional wisdom on the spread of electoral disinformation: the creation of partisan outlets masquerading as local news organizations. An investigation by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School has discovered at least 450 websites in a network of local and business news […] Read more »
Trump sounds just like a right-wing talk-radio host
… Reality TV may have enshrined his celebrity, but Trump’s tone, his concerns and his willingness to shock people are most at home on the radio waves during rush hour. He calls the House investigation “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!” and a “hoax.” He asserts without evidence that […] Read more »
Deep Political Rifts Often Have Led U.S. To Transformation, Researcher Say
America is once again in a sharply polarized era, which makes Lee Drutman of the nonpartisan group New America optimistic. He notes that such times spurred the Revolutionary War and Civil Rights era. Scott Simon, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR Read more »
Political Communication Meets Big Data
How do voters make sense of the information they hear about candidates in the news and through social media? This question was at the heart of a collaboration between researchers at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, and Gallup to study political communication that took place during the 2016 U.S. […] Read more »
A Former Fox News Executive Divides Americans Using Russian Tactics
At first glance, the websites Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News have only one thing in common: Both have been carefully curated to inflame America’s culture wars. … The sites are the work of Ken LaCorte, the former Fox News executive who was accused of killing a story about […] Read more »
‘No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News
… The Democrats in Congress took their case against President Trump to the public last week. But after hours of testimony, thousands of news reports and days of streaming headlines, one thing was clear: A lot of Americans weren’t listening. … In this volatile political moment, information, it would seem, […] Read more »