Research

Current Research:

Local News Access & Political Participation | 2022
I hypothesize that when citizens have access to a local newspaper, they are more likely to engage in traditional political participation activities, such as putting up yard signs and attending political meetings. However, newspapers are shuttering their offices throughout the United States leaving citizens without reliable information about their community. To interrogate these questions, I combine on local newspapers from the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism’s News Deserts project with participation data from Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study to identify areas where citizens lack access to community news. The results show that newspaper readership is the greatest predictor of whether a person will be politically participatory. The number of newspapers only had a marginal, varying effect on participation, social media use for politics, and monetary donations.