Tag: Journal of Communication

NEW YORK (AP) — The steady loss of local newspapers and journalists across the country contributes to the nation's political polarization, a new study has found. With fewer opportunities to find out about local politicians, citizens are more likely to turn to national sources like cable news and apply their feelings about national politics to people running for the town council or state legislature, according to research published in the Journal of Communication. In 1992, 37 percent of states with Senate races elected a senator from a different party than the presidential candidate the state supported. In 2016, for the first time in a century, no state did that, the study found. "The voting behavior was more polarized, less likely to include split ticket voting, if a newspaper had died in the community," said Johanna Dunaway, a communications professor at Texas A&M University, who conducted the research with colleagues from Colorado State and Louisiana State universities. "We have this loss of engagement at the local level," she said. Many larger daily newspapers that have remained open have effectively become ghosts, with much smaller staffs that are unable to offer the breadth of coverage they once did. About 7,100 newspapers remain. Dunaway said voters in communities without newspapers are more likely to be influenced by national labels -- if they like Republicans like President Donald Trump, for example, that approval will probably extend to Republicans lower on the ballot. "They have to rely on party 'brand names' and are less about 'how I can do best for my district,'" she said.