The Unequal Challenge of Learning from Under-informative News


Andrew Trexler
Duke University


APSA
September 2024

Ideals of the Fourth Estate

  • Monitor the actions of government
  • Inform the mass public
  • Enable participation in democracy

Falling Short

Demand for Under-informative News

An Evolving Information Environment

  • Incidental exposure via social media and aggregators
  • Shorter news sessions (news snacking)
  • Engagement through smaller screens


  • Is today’s news coverage of politics effective at informing the public?

Contemporary Styles of Coverage

Coverage Style Example Headline
Public Interest “Kansas Supreme Court rejects Republican-backed abortion restrictions”
Partisan Conflict “Supreme Court hands Trump huge victory in immunity case”
Insider Jargon “Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025 plan”
Prediction-as-news “Supreme Court seems poised to reject Trump’s immunity claim in 2020 election case”
Clickbait “Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.”

Study Design

  • Preregistered vignette experiment
  • Presented 3 news articles, in random order
  • Manipulated coverage styles, but held info constant
    • Treatment: conflict, jargon, prediction, or clickbait
    • Control: public interest
  • DV: post-exposure recall of key factual information

Study Design

  • News consumers rarely read thoroughly
  • Embedded limits on exposure duration to prompt skimming
    • Unlimited (median 85s)
    • Slightly constrained (60s)
    • Severely constrained (30s)

Information Equivalency

  • (Nearly) all text is identical across treatments
  • 4 styled body paragraphs
  • Primary manipulation is to alter paragraph order
  • Some framing manipulation in headline and lede

Example Vignettes

Sample

  • Nonprobability sample (Prolific)
  • Analysis sample n = 2,233
  • Fielded in 2023 September 21-22

Results

Post-exposure Recall


Post-exposure Recall


Baseline Engagement


Takeaways

  • Contemporary news styles struggle to convey critical information
    even when exposure occurs
  • Worse when exposure is brief (very common!)
  • Worse for less politically engaged (many people!)
  • “Public interest” style offers potentially viable alternative

Preprint: osf.io/s7nv4


Thank you!

Andrew Trexler
andrew.trexler@duke.edu
atrexler.com

Backup Slides

Under-informative Styles of Coverage


Under-informative Styles of Coverage


Variation by Style


Mechanical vs. Psychological Effects


Perceived Informativeness


Media Credibility

Support for Democratic Norms