Does Local News Mitigate the Polarized National Rhetoric on COVID-19?

• In Event: Crises in Digital Journalism

Abstract

This analysis tests the prediction that counties with a robust local newspaper sector will cover the COVID-19 pandemic in a manner that mitigates, to some degree, the polarized political rhetoric at the national level regarding the severity of the COVID-19 virus and the capacity for social-distancing to curb its spread. However, the effect of local news abundance will not be symmetrical for heavily-Republican and heavily-Democratic counties; rather, I predict that local news abundance will primarily work to bring Republican counties more on par with Democratic counties in terms of social-distancing compliance. The results of the analysis reveal instead that, rather than function as a mitigating influence, local news abundance is correlated with greater partisan polarization of social-distancing behaviors across predominantly Republican versus predominantly Democratic counties. Whether this is indicative of a larger trend or isolated to this specific subset of coverage, these results offer preliminary evidence that may challenge the prevailing scholarly consensus regarding the quality of the coverage published by some local newspapers and the role they play in their communities.

Author

• Catie Snow Bailard, George Washington University