Join us for a Fireside Chat
On October 24th, join us for "Media Coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election" - a Transatlantic dialogue featuring Tressie McMillan Cottom, Juliane Schäuble, and Daniel Kreiss.
Join us for "Media Coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: The View from Germany and the United States," a Fireside Chat hosted by the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, in partnership with UNC Global Affairs, Thomas Mann House Los Angeles, and the UNC Center for European Studies, and co-sponsored by the UNC School of Information and Library Science.
This engaging discussion will feature Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times columnist, Principal Investigator at CITAP and Associate Professor at UNC SILS, alongside Juliane Schäuble, U.S. Correspondent for the German Tagesspiegel newspaper. The conversation will be moderated by Daniel Kreiss, Principal Investigator at CITAP and Professor at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
This event offers a unique opportunity to explore the dynamics of media coverage of the 2024 U.S. presidential election from both German and American perspectives. Attendees will gain insights into the role of media in shaping public opinion and the broader implications for democracy in a global context. The discussion aims to foster transatlantic dialogue and provide valuable perspectives on how media can influence democratic processes in the contemporary political landscape.
Electoral Information Toolkit
As we head into election season, we are excited to introduce our Electoral Information Toolkit. Curated by our undergraduate intern, Agustin Orozco, this toolkit includes a variety of resources such as documents, podcasts, reports, and practical tools to help you navigate the electoral landscape. The toolkit includes:
Misinformation and Disinformation Fact-Checking Tools
Reports and Policy Analyses on Election Integrity
Educational Materials on Voter Education and Media Literacy
Podcasts and Discussions on Democracy and Technology
Guides for Recognizing and Countering Electoral Misinformation
Strategies for Prebunking and Debunking False Narratives
The toolkit is designed to serve as a valuable public resource, helping individuals stay informed, identify misinformation, and safeguard the integrity of our elections.
Check out the toolkit below 👇👇👇
Expert Insights on the Role of X in Political Ads and Voter Influence
Daniel Kreiss and Deen Freelon spoke with Forbes about the potential impact of X’s Republican ties on voters. Republican-supporting accounts outspent Democrat-supporting ones on X by more than two times from March 6 to October 1, reflecting the platform's shift toward a more Republican-leaning base, according to Deen Freelon. Daniel Kreiss explained that while these ads won't significantly impact voters beyond the GOP base, they make it easier for "co-partisans" to reach conservative audiences for ads and fundraising. Freelon added that X may not be as politically influential as Twitter once was, due to declining active users and Trump's use of Truth Social for key posts.
Affiliate Highlights
“Reinstating Impartiality over Taking a Stance: Repairing Journalism Amid Right-Wing Attacks” by CITAP affiliate Yiping Xia and Yidong Wang examines the discourses surrounding two major 2019 U.S. news stories: the Trump-Russia investigation and the Covington High School incident. Key findings include that center-left media adopted a "paradigm repair" strategy, emphasizing impartiality and self-correction. However, this approach was co-opted by right-wing actors to push narratives of "liberal bias." The study suggests that journalistic authority is better reclaimed through moral judgment rather than an over-reliance on objectivity. The authors argue that balancing professional norms with a moral voice is crucial to countering right-wing attacks.
Alice Marwick was featured on WFDD about the influence of misinformation during a time of crisis: "I think what's happened is that a lot of places where we used to be able to go to find trusted information have sort of scaled back their content moderation effort, and that's made it even more difficult to tell what's true and what's false. The other big change is there are a lot of news outlets that are explicitly partisan, and so when they're writing stories, they're really writing them with a particular partisan perspective."