Yesterday, Nikki Usher spoke about her recent book News for the Rich, White, and Blue as part of the Hussman Media Justice series. The talk is available on YouTube and well worth watching.
As a researcher studying newsrooms as places of power, Dr. Usher explores the ripple effects of the shifting economics of journalism: how economic precarity in the industry makes it inhospitable to non-white and lower-income journalists; what communities lose when local newspapers close; and the coverage-distoring process by which the scramble to earn digital revenue leads to focusing narrowly on an audience who can pay.
“Journalism is a kind of microcosm of our biggest problems and inequalities.”
And as with so many of our biggest problems and inequalities, there are no easy answers. Dr. Usher recommends structuring financial aid to support student papers and student journalists working for local media, student loan forgiveness, embracing partisan media outlets, and place-specific alternatives that maintain part of what newspapers once offered—whatever form that may take.
Political identity, education, & beliefs
“We demonstrate that the effect of one’s political identity on attitudes or false beliefs is contingent upon education, which appears to widen the belief gap in consort with political identity. This is in line with studies that have discovered the most educated liberals and conservatives hold the strongest political identities and therefore more strongly advocate their party’s stance on politicized issues such as climate change.”
In “Mind The Gap! The Role of Political Identity and Attitudes in the Emergence of Belief Gaps,” Shannon McGregor and her co-authors Magdalena Saldaña and Tom Johnson, explore the relationships among political identity, education, and the prevalence of false beliefs about topics that have become politically polarized.
Recent publications and appearances
“Values don’t translate from your mind, into code, and then into society.” At a Knight Foundation symposium on Lessons from the First Internet Ages, Zeynep Tufekci highlighted the importance of policy in enforcing our social values, rather than trusting in technical protocols to do so.
“If we remediate student loan indebtedness this would reopen a conversation that 40 years of disinvestment in the social safety net has made normal and natural...This is part of an overarching movement of disinvestment in public goods and in the idea of citizenship and, frankly, society.” Tressie McMillan Cottom and Louise Seamster discussed the student debt crisis and myth of meritocracy in American higher education on the Ezra Klein Show podcast.
"It’s important to be comfortable owning and developing your own writing voice and style. It is all right to sound like yourself." Tressie McMillan Cottom also sat down with the Chronicle of Higher Education to talk about writing.
“It is a really difficult world out there, particularly with how much of our lives are online and how much content we get online, and how it could be really difficult sometimes to pass through it. What do we trust and not trust? And sometimes we want to just say, ‘You know what, I can't tell. So I'm just not going to risk it.’ And that happens with a lot of people.” CITAP affiliate Kolina Koltai joined Jonathan Van Ness to discuss how vaccine misinformation travels online on his podcast Getting Curious.
“We cannot sacrifice equality and justice on the altar of social cohesion.” Shannon McGregor spoke at the University of Virginia about “Platforms, polarization, and the identitarian citizen in democracy.”
“With a flurry of bills introduced in 2020 and 2021 it’s been tough for researchers, company employees, and policymakers to keep track. Even for tech policy diehards who spend their mornings reading tech policy newsletters and keep close tabs on press releases from congressional offices, trying to piece together the Section 230 reform puzzle can be a full-time job.” Slate’s tracker for proposed Section 230 legislation is updated with contributions from CITAP affiliates Matt Perault, Daniel Johnson, and Noelle Wilson.
“The [office of the] U.S. president performs as a spiritual leader in ways scholars have generally overlooked – not necessarily by invoking a traditional ideology, but by summoning a moral language of solidarity through a compelling, unitary vision and uniquely ‘American’ values.” CITAP affiliate Kirsten Eddy’s new paper examines the language and performance of spiritual leadership in the U.S. Presidency.
Rest of Web
A useful practice to reduce some forms of Twitter harassment: