When Americans live in an area that doesn't have a local newspaper, they are less likely to follow major national news outlets. Instead, they are more likely to choose news sources that match their political beliefs and personal identities. Moreover, this type of news consumption can have downstream consequences, making people more susceptible to misinformation, a Rutgers study found.
“Local news shapes media consumption and public opinion well beyond the local level,” said SC&I Assistant Professor of Communication Jianing Li, who led the study.
The study’s findings, Li added, highlight the importance of local news for understanding how Americans consume media and form beliefs in an increasingly digital communication environment.
“The study underscores the need for policies, infrastructures, and resources to sustain and revive local news,” Li said. “Everyday media users might also pay attention to how news about shared interests or concerns in their own communities may be vanishing and consider what they can do to preserve local news.”
The aim of the study was to understand how the communities people live in can shape their media diets and factual beliefs. The researchers, SC&I Assistant Professor of Communication Jianing Li and Michael W. Wagner of the University of Wisconsin, were interested in comparing individuals living in counties with different local newspaper availability but otherwise similar features.
The paper, “Partisanship in Context: The (A)symmetric Influence of Local Newspaper Availability and Selective Exposure on Political Misperceptions in the U.S.,” was published in the journal Communication Research.
Their research was driven by a central question, “What is replacing local newspapers and how these replacements, both as used by elites to reach the public and as consumed by the public, might heighten political polarization or cause shifts in political behavior?”
Local newspapers, they said, have weathered sharply decreased revenue and newsroom employment over the past several decades. Since 2005, the U.S. has lost around 3,500 local newspapers, leaving millions of Americans in so-called "news deserts." Today, more than 200 U.S. counties have no local newspaper at all. (Source: The State of Local News Project).
“As residents of ‘news deserts’ turn away from national mainstream media, they turn toward national partisan media when local newspapers are no longer available,” Li said.
By examining the decline of local news, selective exposure, and misinformation, we found that the loss of local newspapers can strengthen biases tied to political identities.
Jianing Li
Li said about half of U.S. counties have one local newspaper, which is more likely to be a weekly rather than a daily. “Taken together,” she said, “50 million Americans in these counties have limited or no access to local newspapers. Research has shown that the decline of newspapers negatively impacts political awareness and engagement at the community level.”
In addition, Li added, even communities that do still have a local newspaper are negatively impacted by the current media environment, since local newspapers are harmed by search engine algorithms that systematically send more digital traffic to national outlets.
The researchers noted that Americans trust local newspapers more than the national media, and while trust toward national media has declined over the last five decades it also is increasingly divided along partisan lines.
Another striking difference between local and national newspapers, they added, is that local newspapers cover local politics, and when they cover international and national news they do so in a way that emphasizes local relevance and interests.
“It is imperative to examine how differences in individuals’ local newspaper context affect their consumption of national media with a careful consideration of the difference between media outlets,” the researchers added.
To conduct the research, Li and Wagner used a quasi-experimental design that enabled them to compare individuals living in counties with different local newspaper availability but otherwise matched features. They also studied a particular kind of political misperception – statements made by national political elites that are verifiably false.
"By examining the decline of local news, selective exposure, and misinformation, we found that the loss of local newspapers can strengthen biases tied to political identities," Li said.
Learn more about the Communication Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information.
