20200
P
1
20100
R  E
2
2070
D   I   C
3
2050
T   I   O   N
4
2040
S   F   O   R   J
5
2030
O  U  R  N  A  L
6
2020
I  S  M  2  0  2  0
7

Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative

“People who seek news from across lines of difference and talk politics with people across lines of difference have less polarized attitudes about political leaders and groups, even when accounting for their county’s economic resilience, population change, and health outcomes.”

Ideally, journalism clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth to an audience that trusts the information they consume in such a way that they use it to meaningfully deliberate about the choices they face.

In 2020, I expect journalists to continue to struggle with how to handle issues of truth — when they know the truth, and when they don’t — and citizens to continue to struggle deciding who they can trust across all levels of the information ecology in which they live. These struggles are likely to occur in an increasingly fractured and contentious political environment.

That said, there’s reason to believe, as Talia Stroud noted last year, that journalists’ ability to shed light across lines of difference can continue to play a role in how some citizens deliberate about their political choices.

Living in a contentious political era will continue to seep into people’s everyday lives in ways that it usually doesn’t, fracturing friendships along the way. In 2018, our survey of Wisconsinites found that about half said they’d stopped talking politics with someone over political disagreements, while 20 percent of people literally ended friendships or family relationships due to political disagreements. This is likely to get worse in what will be a very contentious election year.

On the journalism side, I expect journalists to continue highlighting extreme voices, which leads to misperceptions about the nature and extremity of our political divides. I also suspect mainstream outlets will continue to diverge on questions of who to interview, how to recognize what is real (especially on social media), and when to call a lie a lie.

Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers that encourage increased political fracture, there’s strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. In our investigation of how people’s information diet relates to their vote choices, we found that split-ticket votes were mostly likely to be cast by precisely those folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own. In forthcoming work in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, we show that people who seek news from across lines of difference and talk politics with people across lines of difference have less polarized attitudes about political leaders and groups, even when accounting for their county’s economic resilience, population change, and health outcomes.

Though 2020 will surely exacerbate old challenges while raising new ones, I’m hopeful that the journalism that clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth will be helpful to citizens seeking to make sense of their world.

Michael W. Wagner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin.

Ideally, journalism clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth to an audience that trusts the information they consume in such a way that they use it to meaningfully deliberate about the choices they face.

In 2020, I expect journalists to continue to struggle with how to handle issues of truth — when they know the truth, and when they don’t — and citizens to continue to struggle deciding who they can trust across all levels of the information ecology in which they live. These struggles are likely to occur in an increasingly fractured and contentious political environment.

That said, there’s reason to believe, as Talia Stroud noted last year, that journalists’ ability to shed light across lines of difference can continue to play a role in how some citizens deliberate about their political choices.

Living in a contentious political era will continue to seep into people’s everyday lives in ways that it usually doesn’t, fracturing friendships along the way. In 2018, our survey of Wisconsinites found that about half said they’d stopped talking politics with someone over political disagreements, while 20 percent of people literally ended friendships or family relationships due to political disagreements. This is likely to get worse in what will be a very contentious election year.

On the journalism side, I expect journalists to continue highlighting extreme voices, which leads to misperceptions about the nature and extremity of our political divides. I also suspect mainstream outlets will continue to diverge on questions of who to interview, how to recognize what is real (especially on social media), and when to call a lie a lie.

Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers that encourage increased political fracture, there’s strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. In our investigation of how people’s information diet relates to their vote choices, we found that split-ticket votes were mostly likely to be cast by precisely those folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own. In forthcoming work in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, we show that people who seek news from across lines of difference and talk politics with people across lines of difference have less polarized attitudes about political leaders and groups, even when accounting for their county’s economic resilience, population change, and health outcomes.

Though 2020 will surely exacerbate old challenges while raising new ones, I’m hopeful that the journalism that clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth will be helpful to citizens seeking to make sense of their world.

Michael W. Wagner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin.

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Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor   Think twice before turning to Twitter

Christa Scharfenberg   It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women

Logan Jaffe   You don’t need fancy tools to listen

Cristina Kim   Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”

Michael W. Wagner   Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative

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Sue Robinson   Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments

Mira Lowe   The year of student-powered journalism

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Steve Henn   The dawning audio web

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Gordon Crovitz   Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms

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Sarah Alvarez   I’m ready for post-news

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Nathalie Malinarich   Betting on loyalty

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Whitney Phillips   A time to question core beliefs

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Greg Emerson   News apps fall further behind

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Kristen Muller   The year we operationalize community engagement

Rachel Schallom   The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates

Jeremy Olshan   All journalism should be service journalism

Mariana Moura Santos   The future of journalism is collaborative

Carrie Brown-Smith   Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening

Rachel Davis Mersey   The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide

Monique Judge   The year to organize, unionize, and fight

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Kerri Hoffman   Opening closed systems

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Seth C. Lewis   20 questions for 2020

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Geneva Overholser   Death to bothsidesism

Matthew Pressman   News consumers divide into haves and have-nots

An Xiao Mina   The Forum we wanted, the forum we got

Sarah Marshall   The year to learn about news moments

Josh Schwartz   Publishers move beyond the metered paywall

Anthony Nadler   Clash of Clans: Election Edition

John Keefe   Journalism gets hacked

Alana Levinson   Brand-backed media gets another look

Marie Gilot   This is fine

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Carl Bialik   Journalists will try running the whole shop

Adam Thomas   The silver bullet

Craig Newmark   Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation

Imaeyen Ibanga   Let’s take it slow

Sarah Schmalbach   Journalist, quantify thyself

Ben Werdmuller   Use the tools of journalism to save it

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Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The business we want, not the business we had

A.J. Bauer   A fork in the road for conservative media

Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz   News coverage gets geo-fragmented

Beena Raghavendran   The year of the local engagement reporter

Talia Stroud   The work of reconnecting starts November 4

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