In this paper, we assess what variables correlate with how people feel about rural residents. Specifically, this paper examines partisan media use, political beliefs, and placed-based identity as predictors of people's evaluations of rural residents. We also examine the two-way interaction of media use and political beliefs and the three-way interaction of media use, political beliefs, and placed-based identity to better understand where the correlations between media use and feelings toward rural residents are concentrated.

This study examined the correlations between alternative media use and extremist attitudes, populist attitudes and extremist attitudes, and whether populist attitudes moderated the correlation between alternative media use and extremist attitudes. Our results revealed that every alternative media category on both the political left and right was associated with extremist attitudes. However, populist attitudes were not associated with extremist attitudes, nor did populist attitudes moderate the relationship between alternative media use and extremist attitudes. It is our intention that the current work serves as a first step for scholars seeking to examine media use and extremist attitudes.

Selective exposure occurs when individuals gravitate toward attitude-consistent information. In the United States, partisan identity guides selective exposure behavior. While partisanship is the typical culprit for partisan media selectivity, scholars have recommended examining the causal mechanisms underlying this relationship. This study examines the relationship between partisan identity threat and reassurance and selective exposure as well as the moderating effect of partisan identity strength and mediating effect of anger and enthusiasm. We find that partisan identity threat is associated with anger, reassurance with enthusiasm, and that the relationship increased as partisan strength increased. Threat and reassurance did not directly spur selective exposure, though we found an indirect effect of partisan reassurance on selective exposure via enthusiasm, which strengthened as partisanship intensified.

Two studies examined hyper-partisan and alternative media audiences in the United States and their relationship with misperceptions—or false beliefs—despite available evidence to disprove them. Study 1, which used secondary data (ANES), yielded limited findings and suggested that hyper-partisan conservative content was associated with holding misperceptions. Study 2 used an original survey (N = 661) to examine American alternative media repertoires and their relationship with holding false beliefs. The findings of Study 2 suggested that not only is alternative media exposure related to misperceptions but so was exposure to media generally among our respondents.

Contemporary research on social media looks different than it did in the late 2010s, with users facing a high-choice social media environment as new platforms emerge. Subsequently, alt-right sites have experienced a rise in users—sometimes those who have experienced content moderation by traditional social media sites. As such, scholars have investigated the impact of this content moderation (e.g. de-platforming) on users and the content posted on new alt-right platforms. This work seeks to expand extant research through analyzing a survey of Gab, Parler (now defunct), Truth Social, and Rumble users (N = 427) who have experienced content moderation on other social media sites. While we find that those temporarily or permanently banned from traditional sites are unlikely to leave the platform altogether for a right-wing alternative social media (RWASM) site, there are active users on these sites worth studying.

Purpose: While morality is ever-present in elections, scholars have yet to merge political public relations and Moral Foundations Theory. It is crucial to assess the complex morality present not only in social deduction, but also in political strategic communication. The current work analyzes the issue agendas and their relationships in the 2020 presidential campaign and assesses their moral strategy.

Method/Approach: This study used a computer-assisted content analysis (N = 7,888) with each moral intuition coded from the Moral Foundations Dictionary. Datapoints included campaign tweets, Facebook posts, debate performances, remarks, news releases, and nomination acceptance speeches. Coverage included articles from including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Fox News to assess both liberal and conservative media.

Findings: Candidates’ issue and moral agendas were correlated with each other and with the media’s agenda. Comparatively, the Biden campaign has stronger correlations when it came to connecting with issues, stakeholders, and moral intuitions in the media agenda than the Trump campaign. For issues, the Biden campaign prioritized COVID-19 and the economy, while the Trump campaign prioritized the economy and crime. The candidates also had similar moral strategies.

Aspects of our political world brought to the forefront in recent years include the impact of declining media trust and a surge of populist politicians around the globe. Highlighting both of these aspects, this study utilizes representative data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) collected during the 2020 US Presidential Election. We examine the relationship between use of different media (mainstream liberal, mainstream conservative, and hyper-conservative) and media trust as well as the moderating role of populist beliefs. Results found that hyper-conservative media use and anti-elitist populist beliefs are negatively associated with media trust while liberal media use is positively associated with media trust; mainstream conservative media use is unrelated to media trust when controlling for other media types and populist beliefs. This lack of main effect for conservative media is clarified by examining the interaction with anti-elitist populism, which shows increased use of conservative media for individuals with low levels of populist beliefs is associated with increased media trust while the opposite is true for those high in populist beliefs.

In two experiments, this manuscript examines the impact of uncivil news comments for both users and newsrooms. The first experiment varied the tone of the comments and determined that uncivil comments reduced media trust and outlet trust in comparison to civil comments. The second study examined the target of the comments and determined that uncivil comments targeting the author of the story decreased media trust, and uncivil comments targeting the outlet reduced trust in the specific media outlet. Neither the nature of the comments nor comment targets were related to use intentions. Implications are discussed.

This experiment (N = 591) tests whether audiences adjust their standards for what qualifies as fair journalism based the transparency of news editors, the source of the news, and the target of an accusation. In the context of a whistleblower scandal, the results suggest the relationship between the audience member’s ideology and the news story publisher and target influence what details the audience thinks journalists should reveal. Additionally, we find transparency from editors can alter those perceptions.

This study examined the salience and valence of frames in community and national newspaper coverage of the 2018 Parkland shootings, after which several survivors became well-known activists. Of the most common frames found in previous coverage of mass shootings (gun control, popular culture, school safety), only gun control was prominent following the shootings in Parkland. Newer frames (partisan divide, activism, mental health) instead followed gun control in popularity, likely because these were utilized by the activist Parkland survivors themselves. With a few important exceptions (e.g., community newspapers used community change, law responsibility, and family responsibility more; national used gun control, activism, and partisan divide more), local and community newspapers were similar in their use of frames. Perhaps most importantly, the findings indicate the survivors’ activism seemed to disrupt the “settling” of news coverage into well-established frames for mass shootings. This suggests the ongoing conversation about mass shootings remains complicated and more dependent on shootings’ specific circumstances than may have been previously assumed.