Extensions Winter 2018

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

Winter 2018

s w e N e k #Fa

CONGRESS IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS

Established in 1979 by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center is a nonpartisan institution devoted to instruction and scholarship related to the United States Congress. The mission of the Center is defined broadly in terms of academic inquiry into the history, structure, process, personnel, and policies of the Congress, and the relationship between the Congress and other agencies and actors in the American political system.

In the most general sense, the Center is concerned with the problems of modern representative democracy, as exemplified by the Congress.

In pursuit of this goal, the Carl Albert Center performs four principal functions. The first is the development of academic programs in congressional studies at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, which are sponsored in cooperation with the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Political Science. At the graduate level the Center offers a specialized fellowship program leading toward the doctoral degree. Each fellow receives a fully financed program of study. At the undergraduate level the Center sponsors a research fellowship program designed to foster collaborative research between faculty and undergraduates.

Second, believing that professional research is the foundation upon which its academic programs rest, the Center promotes original research by faculty members and students into various aspects of politics and the Congress.

The Center encourages publication and provides its faculty and students with institutional and financial support to travel for research purposes and to present research findings at professional conferences.

The third function of the Center is the development of resource materials related to the Congress. The Center’s congressional archives, which are among the largest in the country, include the papers of more than 60 former members of Congress. Such prominent Oklahomans as Speaker Carl Albert, Dewey F. Bartlett, Page Belcher, Mickey Edwards, Glenn English, Robert S. Kerr, Sr., Fred Harris, Steve Largent, Dave McCurdy, Mike Monroney, Tom Steed, Mike Synar, and J. C. Watts have donated their papers to the Center along with such distinguished non-Oklahomans as Dick Armey, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Carl Hatch.

Fourth, the Center actively strives to promote a wider understanding and appreciation of the Congress through various civic education programs. The Center sponsors conferences, speakers, television appearances, and the biennial Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture in Representative Government. The Center also publishes Extensions, a journal which focuses on issues related to the Congress. Taken together, these diverse aspects of the Carl Albert Center constitute a unique resource for scholarship and research related to the United States Congress.

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center Director and Curator Cindy Simon Rosenthal Associate Director Michael H. Crespin Associate Professor Charles J. Finocchiaro Director of Administration Katherine McRae Director of N.E.W. Leadership Lauren Schueler Assistant Curator Nathan Gerth Archivist Rachel Henson National Advisory Board David E. Albert Richard A. Baker David L. Boren Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Joseph S. Foote Joel Jankowsky Dave McCurdy Frank H. Mackaman Thomas E. Mann Chuck Neal Michael L. Reed Catherine E. Rudder U.S. Rep. Tom Cole 4th District, Oklahoma ex officio Managing Editor, Extensions Chip Minty Minty Communications LLC Graphic Designer, Extensions Brandy Akbaran University of Oklahoma Printing, Mailing and Document Services

A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor’s Introduction

2

Reality and Truth in Our Political Discourse

Special Orders

6

Winter 2018

Cindy Simon Rosenthal

Fake News: A Perfect Storm Patrick C. Meirick

12

Real News, Fake News — For Lawmakers, No News is Good News

18

Correcting Misinformation on Social Media: Successes, Challenges, and Policy Implications

Mary Layton Atkinson

Leticia Bode and Emily K. Vraga

For the Record

24

Daniel Carpenter Delivers 2017 Rothbaum Lecture The American Petition: Sinew of Our Democratic Republic

26

News from the Center

Cindy Simon Rosenthal

Katherine McRae

Images courtesy of AP Images, Getty Images, Photospin.com, Pixabay.com PolitiFact, and Wikimedia Commons.

Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is published twice each year and distributed free of charge. To receive copies of Extensions, or to obtain permission to reprint, please contact Katherine McRae at (405) 325-6372 or e-mail to mcrae@ou.edu. Extensions also may be viewed on the Center’s website at www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter.

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Editor’s Introduction

REALITY AND TRUTH IN OUR

POLITICAL DISCOURSE Cindy Simon Rosenthal | Editor

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” #fakenews

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ith exactly 140 characters, the above epigram could easily be imagined as a tweet from the current occupant of the White House or as a response to a Twitter posting of many members of Congress. However, the author of this quote – minus the hashtag – was none other than President Thomas Jefferson, writing by letter in 1807 to a young reporter and expressing his view of the longstanding tension between elected officials and the Fourth Estate.1 As a former newspaper reporter, I have always felt that the media play a special role in our democracy.

To be sure, reporters are not doing their jobs if they do not question, challenge, and seek to hold public officials accountable. This year’s attacks on the legitimacy, accuracy, and honesty of news-gathers have been especially disturbing and troubling, however; and the epithet of “fake news” has crept into daily political discourse, undermining trust, encouraging conspiracy theorists, fueling partisan discord, and introducing threats to our democratic institutions. Coupled with the explosion of internet-based news aggregators, citizen bloggers 2

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and the crumbling of community journalism and local-news reporting, the media environment is especially vulnerable to unchecked information and the toxic paradox of too much information and not enough news.

To an extent, as Thomas Jefferson’s complaint suggests, a free press and American politicians have always clashed. Patrick Meirick and Mary Layton Atkinson review some of these historic conflicts in their contributions to this issue.

But, is there something particularly problematic about the current war between elected officials and the news media in the 21st century and the accusations of fake news?

First, we might consider what constitutes fake news. On the one hand, outright propaganda aimed at deception and manipulation of the citizenry for political ends dates to the Greeks, who used their dramas to present political arguments and influence opinion.

Shoddy journalism is also not new. Thankfully, the Columbia Journalism Review and other purveyors of professional journalistic standards call out these errors, mistakes and outright whoppers. On a daily basis, independent fact checkers comb through speeches, news stories,

press releases, campaign brochures, TV ads, Facebook postings, and transcripts of TV and radio interviews to verify or refute the claims made by news makers and reporters.

Increasingly, however, many of the stories which get labeled as fake news are simply those which we (and the subjects of the stories) do not like or do not fit our ideological preferences.

The term fake news serves as an umbrella covering a variety of different things, including bogus claims of questionable products intended to make your life more tolerable, healthy and convenient, all for the modest price of $49.99.

Perhaps the most important elements to consider in today’s political climate are the intent and the purpose. There are those who would manufacture lies for partisan gain; there are those who believe the misinformation or lack the knowledge to reject it; and there are those who spread the untruths either intentionally or unintentionally.

A Fact-Challenged Environment More than a decade ago, Stephen Colbert rolled out his first segment of “The Word” and proclaimed the

right of any individual to declare as truth his or her own facts; thus “truthiness” was coined. Not long after that, Webster’s had incorporated the word officially into our lexicon. According to Wikipedia (our wired world’s arbiter of information), “Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.”

Much earlier, the ambiguous relationship between information and truth was the focus of Daniel Boorstin’s 1962 classic, The Image, in which he argued that technology and the rise of a 24-hour-news cycle created a demand for news content and opened the gates to a “flood of pseudo-events.”2 Interviews, press conferences, press releases, leaks, talk shows, the woman-onthe-street’s reaction to events and numerous commentators filled the space. News gatherers became news makers and whole new jobs emerged – press secretaries, public information officers, crisis communication consultants, public affairs strategists, and spin doctors among others. The line between pseudo-events and propaganda blurred.

“While a pseudo-event is an ambiguous truth, propaganda is

an appealing falsehood. Pseudoevents thrive on our honest desire to be informed, to have ‘all the facts,’ and even to have more facts than there really are,” wrote Boorstin. “Propaganda oversimplifies experiences, pseudo-events overcomplicate it.”

Fast forward from the 1960s to today, news consumers face a proliferation of news outlets and untold social media sources via the internet. Most people are flooded with information or at least have the opportunity to digest multiple points of view.

Unfortunately, ideological sources with strong agendas dominate the information environment, and our own predispositions to ideological polarization play out in cyberspace.

Fake News and the 2016 Election In spite of its long history, fake news re-emerged onto the presidential election stage with a vengeance, and reports of fabricated news stories circulating on Facebook and other social media platforms were widely reported in the fall of 2016. These hoax news stories were neither journalism nor politics, but rather the motivation was to make money by posting false stories which would invite clicks and drive advertising value.

Only after the election did the term become an epithet, a weapon aimed at undermining the authority and trustworthiness of the traditional mainstream media outlets. President Trump posted his first-ever tweet

Kanter Trust in News survey, Oct. 2017 extensions | Winter 2018

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containing the phrase “fake news” on Dec. 10, 2016, more than a month after Election Day, and since that time, the term has represented a fullfrontal attack on the reporters and their media outlets. 3 It is too early to predict the consequences of the White Houseled attack on news reporters and traditional media companies. Polling suggests that reaction is mixed.

The Kantar Trust in News Survey released in late October 2017 shows that trust in mainstream news brands is much higher (>74 percent) than in social media (37 percent). The survey polled 8,000 individuals across four countries, including the U.S. It measured attitudes about the coverage of politics and elections and suggests that most of the reputational damage caused by fake news is attributed to online sources. (See Figure 1) By contrast, a Harvard-Harris poll, which was provided exclusively to The Hill in May 2017, reported that 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media.

How Does This Affect Congress and What Should Be Done?

The Fourth Estate is supposed to provide transparency and promote accountability within the government, and, as Mary Layton Atkinson writes in this issue, congress members have plenty of incentives to try to do their work away from the press. The

congressional process is complicated and the issues are complex; witness the difficulties confronting the Republican majorities to repeal and replace the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act. Atkinson argues that the best antidote to combat fake news may be to increase bipartisanship and encourage lawmakers to work across the aisle, thus giving less fodder for generating the kind of conflicts on which news outlets (fake or otherwise) thrive.

Leticia Bode and Emily K. Vraga, in their contribution to this issue, explore the potential for curbing fake news online through factchecking capabilities and social media correction. Their research shows that experts can effectively buffer false reports and some technologies exist to make it easier to correct misinformation. They also raise the possibility that members of Congress, if appropriately motivated, might be effective counterweights in calling out misinformation.

Finally, Patrick Meirick advises that the burden of combatting fake news will likely depend on the ability of citizens to stay informed and be aware of their own biases.

Citizens must develop the capacity to recognize and question stories that too conveniently fit their worst beliefs about the other side. This can be difficult; Meirick points to research that finds strong partisans with high political knowledge are more likely to hold misperceptions. In short, fake news can easily reinforce the biases

IN A MEDIA ENVIRONMENT ALREADY FLOODED WITH A CACOPHONY OF VOICES, CALLS FOR CONGRESSIONAL ACTION TO INVESTIGATE, POTENTIALLY SANCTION, OR REGULATE THE FLOW OF INFORMATION ARE BOTH EXTREMELY DIFFICULT AND POTENTIALLY VERY DANGEROUS. 4

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of strong partisans and play into the partisan polarization which seems to paralyze congressional policymakers.

In the end, it is possible to agree that fake news presents two problems: first, false statements are bad, promoting ignorance and misinformation and threatening democratic governance; second, efforts by government entities or elected officials to curb any kind of information sharing are even worse.

Whether we like it or not, false information – and the right to read and consume it – is protected under the First Amendment and under international laws protecting writers and readers.

In a media environment already flooded with a cacophony of voices, calls for congressional action to investigate, potentially sanction, or regulate the flow of information are both extremely difficult and potentially very dangerous. PEN America, which works to ensure that the U.S. lives up to the principles and promotes the values of open expression, creative freedom, and a strong, independent press here and around the world, concludes that the only solution is to cultivate information literacy and wise news consumers. “The fight against fake news will hinge not on inculcating trust in specific sources of authority but on instilling skepticism, curiosity, and a sense of agency among consumers, who are the best bulwark against the merchants of deceit.”4 Are we up to the challenge?

Notes 1.

Uberti, David. “The Real History of Fake News.” Columbia Journalism Review. December 15, 2016. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/ fake_news_history.php 2.

Boorstin, Daniel J. 1962. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper & Row, p. 34-35.

3.

Desai, Samarth. “Linguist-In-Chief: Trump and the Meaning of Fake News.” Harvard Political Review, April 1, 2017, accessed at http:// harvardpolitics.com/united-states/linguist-chieftrump-meaning-fake-news/ .

4.

PEN America. 2017. “The Pro-Free Speech Way To Fight Fake News.” Accessed November 14, 2017, https://pen.org/press-clip/pro-freespeech-way-fight-fake-news/ .

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Special Orders

FAKE NEWS:

A PERFECT STORM Patrick C. Meirick | University of Oklahoma Patrick C. Meirick is an associate professor of communication and director of the Political Communication Center at the University of Oklahoma and an associate editor of the journal Mass Communication and Society. His research examines misinformation and misperceptions, political advertising, framing, agenda-setting, and perceptions of media effects.

C

ollins Dictionary named “fake news” its “word of the year” for 2016, and its use has risen 365 percent in 2017. The word and the phenomenon it denotes have taken on a suddenly outsized role in political discourse. In this essay, I will discuss the ways in which changes in the media ecology allowed the purveyors of fake news to capitalize on its consumers’ psychological biases.

The first task in writing about fake news is to define it, because there may not be a more protean term in the English language. Ten years ago, the term was used to describe “The Daily Show with

Jon Stewart” and The Onion, a satirical newspaper. Today, it might mean satire, completely fabricated stories, partisan spin, or any news source to which President Trump objects. To give Collins Dictionary its due, it defines fake news as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting.”

Under this definition, fake news has always been with us because the news media have never been 100 percent accurate; witness the “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1948. But this definition omits the question of intent, which helps us to distinguish between inaccuracy

BUT THEN CAME THE INTERNET. TRADITIONAL NEWS ORGANIZATIONS WITH THEIR PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS WERE NO LONGER THE ONLY AVENUE THROUGH WHICH STORIES MIGHT REACH THE PUBLIC. THE COST OF ENTRY INTO THE INDUSTRY WAS NO LONGER THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IT TOOK TO BUY A PRINTING PRESS OR A BROADCAST TOWER; IT WAS A COMPUTER AND AN INTERNET CONNECTION. 6

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and deception. The Dewey headline was false, but it is hard to imagine that it was deliberately so. Likewise, satire aims to amuse, not to confuse. For the purposes of this essay, I consider fake news to be false information that poses as news and is intended to deceive its audience. This definition thus excludes transparently satirical stories and inadvertent journalistic errors. Instead, it focuses primarily on internet and social media sites that spread fabricated or distorted accounts of events.

Because this phenomenon is so new, scholars know little about it. But we can identify related phenomena to help us make sense of fake news. I will first examine how changes in the media environment made fake news possible. My central focus is: Why now? Then I turn to the psychology behind its success.

Lowered Barriers to Entry Media scholars use the term “gatekeeping” to describe the process by which the traditional news media decides what stories to publish or air. The metaphor calls to mind a halberd-wielding guard who will admit only the worthiest petitioners to the castle

to see the king, but the news gate is meant to apply a filter to all of the events of the day to decide what is, in the words of The New York Times motto, “fit to print.”

Reporters pitch stories to editors, or editors assign them to reporters. Either way the stories have to meet standards of newsworthiness, which then decide how “big” a story is when compared with another. Reporters have to be able to gather and verify facts, gain access to sources, and have the time to write and shoot.

Editors vet the stories to ensure they meet journalistic norms of objectivity and fairness and decide where, when or whether each one sees the light of day.

But then came the internet.

Traditional news organizations with their professional journalists were no longer the only avenue through which stories might reach the public. The cost of entry into the industry was no longer the millions of dollars it took to buy a printing press or a broadcast tower; it was a computer and an internet connection. And this meant a one-person shop could potentially reach the world. One of the first big stories that made an end run around the gates of the traditional news media was the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

The Drudge Report, a conservative news aggregation site, broke the news when it reported that Newsweek had withheld a story about Clinton’s relationship with a White House intern.

Traditional news media rushed to establish a foothold online, sometimes without a business plan in mind. In the online environment, a cable news network, a national daily newspaper, and an activist’s blog all come through the same screen, leveling the playing field. And over the course of a generation, the internet has become the primary news source for people under 40, a group that consumes

less news and trusts it less than older citizens do.

Falling Trust in the News Media Gallup has been polling Americans about their trust in the news media since 1972. Trust peaked at 72 percent in 1976 when journalists were still basking in the glow of their role in bringing Watergate to light. Forty years later, just before the 2016 elections, trust hit a new low: 32 percent. (There has been a rebound so far, this year; it’s up to 41 percent now.)

Trust in the news media has fallen across groups: among the young and the old, among Democrats and Republicans. It is likely that the news media’s missteps and the increased availability of unvetted information online have contributed to this fall. But another prime suspect in the erosion of trust is a concerted campaign on the right to portray the news media as having a liberal bias. Although this portrayal can be traced back to Barry Goldwater (coining the label “Eastern Liberal Press”) and Spiro Agnew (attacking the “nattering nabobs of negativism”) in the 1960s, it ramped up significantly in the 1990s. In fact, one study found newspaper coverage of liberal media bias claims grew more than 14-fold from 1988 to 1996, suggesting the news media’s own coverage of bias has helped give the claims credence.1 But the claims also came from a new source after the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. That source was conservative talk radio.

No longer constrained to maintain a balance of political viewpoints across their broadcast schedules, radio stations began creating allconservative lineups featuring Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other hosts. Liberal talk radio never really took off; more than 90 percent of political talk radio is conservative.

Accordingly, distrust of the news media is more pronounced among conservatives and Republicans than among liberals and Democrats, and that partisan divide has grown. The trust gap between Republicans and Democrats was as narrow as seven points in 1998 when wallto-wall Clinton-Lewinski coverage increased Republicans faith in the news. Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks on the news media helped to politicize trust in the news more than ever before. By 2016, only 14 percent of Republicans said they trusted the media a great deal or a fair amount.

The Return of Partisan News Choice In the 1800s, newspapers frequently served as party organs; the names of some newspapers (such as the Arkansas Democrat-

Vice President Spiro Agnew confronts reporters at a news conference called to answer accusations of corruption and wrong-doing by him. His memorable attacks on the press included “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” (Photo by © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

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Gazette) are a relic of that time. In an era in which print was the only mass medium, towns with multiple newspapers were common, so readers could subscribe to the newspaper that came from the party they preferred. The choice became less clear by the early 1900s for a few reasons. Advertising rather than party support became the main source of income for newspapers, so they aimed for a tone that was middle of the road.

Wire services, too, sought and offered uncontroversial, just-thefacts reporting, so objectivity became a prevailing norm in news.

A newspaper’s slant, if it had one, would typically be confined mostly to the editorial pages.

It was in the context of the 1940 presidential election that sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues observed and described what they called “selective exposure,” a general tendency for people to prefer information that was congenial to their own point of view. 2 (I will return to this concept in a moment.) But this preference was predicated on the availability of partisan choice in news. By the 1960s, television became the dominant news medium, and this was a medium without an “editorial page.” For national news, the choice was between three networks, none of which staked out a clear ideological position.

On the heels of conservative talk radio in the late 1980s, partisan choice came to cable television in 1996 with the creation of Fox News, which was designed to offer an alternative to what conservatives saw as a liberal bias in the mainstream media. Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, Fox News became the most-viewed cable news network. MSNBC, which was also founded in 1996, shifted leftward a decade later to offer an explicitly left-leaning counterweight to Fox News, and it soon saw its ratings rise. Unlike broadcast news, Fox News and MSNBC not only have an editorial page, most of 8

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their schedule is opinion. Moreover, their partisan slant is sometimes on display in news selection and coverage.

Also in the mid-1990s, the public became aware of the “Worldwide Web” as a source of information.

And as the mainstream media moved online, countless partisan sites were created, such as TownHall.com on the right (1995) and MoveOn.Org on

the left (1998). Some were discussion forums, some were commentary sites, and others were aggregators of news. Soon there was a plethora of choices for news and information available to the news consumer. The prevalence of partisan news on cable television and online has fed the growing perception that the news in general is biased.

Trust Levels of News Sources by Ideological Group Consistently Mostly Mostly Consistently liberal liberal Mixed conserv. conservative The Economist BBC NPR PBS The Wall Street Journal ABC News CBS News NBC News

Within each ideological group, source is overall...

More trusted than distrusted

CNN USA TODAY Google News

About equally trusted as distrusted

The Blaze The New York Times The Washington Post

More distrusted than trusted

MSNBC The Guardian Bloomberg The New Yorker

Source names in bold have been “heard of” by at least 40% of web respondents

Politico Yahoo News Fox News Mother Jones Slate Breitbart The Huffington Post The Colbert Report ThinkProgress The Daily Show Drudge Report Daily Kos The Sean Hannity Show Al Jazeera America The Ed Schultz Show The Glenn Beck Program The Rush Limbaugh Show BuzzFeed American Trends Panel (wave1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014.

Q21a-21b. Based on web respondents. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions (see about the survey). Grouping of outlets is determined by whether the percent who trust each source is significantly different from the percent who distrust each source. Outlets are then ranked by the proportion of those who trust more than distrust each.

PEW RESEARCH CENTER

Why Do People Fall for Fake News?

A survey conducted late last year

by Ipsos found that most people who saw fake news headlines believed them to be accurate. There are several possible reasons that people might believe false news stories. I’ll briefly mention a few more speculative explanations here and then move on to those more strongly supported by theory and research.

One possibility is that some people are unaware of how prevalent fake news is; indeed, the top fake news stories were liked and shared more frequently on Facebook last fall than the top real news stories. Relatedly, some fake news sites have copied the look and web addresses of real news sites, such as abcnews.com. co. Such sites have fooled me in the past.

Finally, some might argue that there is an increasingly thin line between reality and satire. Given the number of jaw-dropping gaffes Sarah Palin, Joe Biden, Ben Carson and others have uttered on tape, it becomes easier to believe fake news about them. When someone actually has done or said so many seemingly unbelievable things that you are ready to believe anything about

them, they have entered what sports columnist Bill Simmons called the “Tyson Zone.” His reference was to Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion who famously bit off a piece of an opponent’s ear, keeps a tiger as a pet, and sports elaborate facial tattoos.

Two explanations tend to dominate the research into why people believe false political claims.

One focuses on what the individual wants to believe and what they know. The other looks to information and misinformation.

Motivated Reasoning Democratic theory would prefer that citizens seek out all relevant information about an upcoming political decision and then choose the option that best serves one’s enlightened self-interest. That is not really what most people do. Seeking out information is hard and the reward is meager, so most people do not do much of it. Moreover, the people who care the most about politics do so because their political identity is a highly valued aspect of their self-concepts. They do not necessarily reason with the goal of reaching the most accurate conclusion; they often prefer the

conclusion that affirms their political identity. Scholars refer to this practice as motivated reasoning.

Motivated reasoning comes into play in the news we see and the way we process that news. In the era of low news choice (the broadcast era), selective exposure had been debated, but there is now little doubt that people generally do prefer information that confirms their beliefs. 3 Conservatives and Republicans, for instance, are three times as likely to watch Fox News as are liberals and Democrats; the disparities are even greater for partisan websites. 4 As for how we think about what we see, partisan reasoners behave less like impartial referees at a football game and more like the face-painted crowd, cheering and booing. People tend to elaborate on information with which they agree, and they counterargue against information with which they disagree. 5 The more people care about politics, the more motivated they are to come up with supportive evidence and counterarguments.

Motivated reasoning makes people more likely to believe the worst about the other side and the best about their own, regardless of the actual state of affairs. For

Political scientists Brian Schaffner and Samantha Luks found evidence of motivated reasoning when they asked people which inauguration crowd image went with President Trump’s 2017 inauguration (left) and which went with President Obama’s 2009 inauguration (right). Fully 41 percent of Trump supporters gave the wrong answer, compared to only 8 percent of Clinton voters and 21 percent of non-voters. (AP Photo, File)

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example, half of strong Democrats in 1988 thought inflation had worsened during Reagan’s two terms in office, when the rate had actually fallen from 13.5 percent to 4.1 percent.

Likewise, the average Republican in 2000 believed crime had gotten worse during Bill Clinton’s two terms; in fact, the crime rate had fallen by 27 percent. 6 I call these false beliefs political misperceptions.

And partisanship is perhaps the best predictor of these misperceptions.7 Fake news is tailor-made to appeal to the partisan brain. It picks up on partisan narratives about the ineptness or perfidy of the other side to encourage mockery or outrage. Recent examples include a story headlined “House Dems introduce bill to remove citizenship requirement from presidency” from Americannews88.com and a photo on the Facebook page Wake Up America purporting to show Sarah Huckabee Sanders dressed as a KKK member in 1993.

Political Knowledge Political knowledge and misperceptions are typically measured the same way: with questions that have a right or wrong answer. It is perhaps unsurprising

that, generally speaking, the less a person knows about politics, the more likely he is to hold misperceptions. Education is sometimes used as a proxy for political knowledge, and the results look much the same: people with higher levels of education hold fewer misperceptions.

That said, research has sometimes found that strong partisans, who also have high knowledge, are more likely to hold misperceptions than we would otherwise expect. 8 That is, they are not only highly motivated to counterargue against facts, they also are quite able to do so. This finding provides further evidence for the motived reasoning explanation.

Traditional News Exposure Because news exposure helps promote political knowledge, people who watch more news generally hold fewer misperceptions than those who don’t. The best track record has been for newspapers, followed by internet news and television news. In one of my recent studies, television news was the only news source related to misperceptions, but its effects were mixed. 9 The more people

USA IN FRONT BREAKING: Illegal Muslim From Iran Arrested For Starting California Wildfire — Politifact California on Wednesday, December 20th, 2017

Claim one of many fabricated tales about California wildfires

TMZBREAKING “Law passed: All child support in the United States will end by beginning of 2018.”

— Punditfact on Tuesday, December 19th, 2017

Child support still exists

Fact checking organizations identify distortions across the political spectrum. Sometimes fake news sites take stories from satirical websites without the original disclaimers (Images courtesy of PolitiFact).

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watched TV news, the more likely they were to correctly perceive that the economy, deficit and poverty in 2008 were worse than they were in 2001. However, they also were more likely to think incorrectly that crime had gotten worse, a byproduct of the local television news philosophy “if it bleeds, it leads.”

Partisan News Exposure A substantial body of research suggests exposure to Fox News can promote misperceptions that serve the Republican cause, such as the idea that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq or that health care reform proposed

by Barack Obama would create what Sarah Palin called “death panels” in which bureaucrats would decide who was worthy of health care. There is less research on MSNBC and liberal news, but one recent study suggests it can promote misperceptions that serve the Democratic cause, such as an overoptimistic assessment of job creation during Obama’s first term.10 Not surprisingly, partisan news tends to protect against holding misperceptions that serve the opposing party. For example, MSNBC viewers are less likely to believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

Many observers have expressed concern about the potential for “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles” because partisan news tends to attract like-minded audiences who are seemingly predisposed to accept its messages. There is some evidence for this concern.

Liberal news has its strongest effects on Democrats, discouraging Republican-serving misperceptions and promoting Democratic-serving misperceptions. 11 But surprisingly, it appears that conservative news has stronger effects on Democrats than on Republicans.12 In one recent study, I looked at the combined effects of 17 demographic, media-

use, and psychological variables.

As it turned out, the one thing that influenced the number of misperceptions that Republicans held came down to one variable: how conservative they were.13 Thus, the conservative echo chamber may not be to blame for the misperceptions that Republicans hold. But Democrats, who broaden their media diet to include conservative media, are likely to pick up Republican-serving misperceptions.

Fake news is largely spread through social media. Since most people’s “real life” friend groups tend to be similar politically,14 the same is true online. Among people who indicate their political leanings on Facebook, the majority of friends share those leanings. Conservatives make up 20 percent of liberals’ Facebook friends and liberals make up 18 percent of conservatives’ Facebook friends.15 Accordingly, people’s Facebook news feeds tend to feature like-minded news (and fake news) from pages that either they or their friends follow. The fact that a friend endorses the fake news can help lend it added credibility, and the virality of sharing on social media can give fake news purveyors unexpected reach.

Now What?

Facebook has begun to take measures to fight the spread of fake news. It has partnered with Politifact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, ABC News, and the Associated Press to factcheck stories that appear in news feeds. Now, if two or more of these organizations challenge the accuracy of a story, Facebook flags the content as “disputed” before a user shares the story. If the user clicks on the “disputed” flag, a popup window provides the links to the fact-checks and says, “Sometimes people share fake news without knowing it. When independent fact-checkers dispute

FACEBOOK HAS BEGUN TO TAKE MEASURES TO FIGHT THE SPREAD OF FAKE NEWS. IT HAS PARTNERED WITH POLITIFACT, FACTCHECK.ORG, SNOPES, ABC NEWS, AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS TO FACT-CHECK STORIES THAT APPEAR IN NEWS FEEDS.

this content, you may be able to visit their websites to find out why.”

This solution has some limitations.

First, the warning only appears if the user tries to share the story, not if it merely appears in the news feed.

Second, it takes two fact-checks to trigger the flag; a milder version that says, “You might want to read more before sharing” appears for one fact-check. Third, the sheer volume of misinformation that is produced makes it unlikely that the vast majority of fake news will get one fact-check, let alone two. Finally, there is a whack-a-mole aspect to the problem: When fake news is factchecked, it is often taken down and put up on a sister site. Other times, fake news sites may take stories from satirical sites and post the stories without the original disclaimers.

The burden of combatting fake news is going to fall mainly on citizens to educate themselves and to be aware of their own biases. Citizens will need to read further before sharing and they should speak up when fake news appears on social media. But misperceptions can be stubborn things. Mere debunking may not change minds and may even harden misperceptions. De-emphasizing partisan aspects of the disagreement can help to ramp down motivated reasoning. Social science suggests it is important to allow the sharer to save face. Remember, the goal is to win hearts and minds rather than arguments.

Notes 1.

Watts, M. D., Domke, D., Shah, D. V., & Fan, D. P. (1999). “Elite cues and media bias in presidential campaigns: Explaining public perceptions of a liberal press.” Communication Research, 26(2), 144-175.

2.

Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B. R., & Gaudet, H. (1948). “The people’s choice.” New York: Columbia University Press.

3.

Hart,W., Albarracın, D., Eagly, A. H., Brechan, I., Lindberg, M. J., & Merrill, L. (2009). “Feeling validated versus being correct: A meta-analysis of selective exposure to information.” Psychological Bulletin, 135, 555–588.

4.

Stroud, N. J. (2011). “Niche news: The politics of news choice.” New York: Oxford University Press.

5.

Taber, C. S., Cann, D., & Kucsova, S. (2009). “The motivated processing of political arguments.” Political Behavior, 31, 137–155.

6.

Bartels, L. (2002). “Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions.”

Political Behavior 24:2 (2002), 117-150.

7.

Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Jerit, J., Schweider, D., & Rich, R. F. (2000).

“Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship.” The Journal of Politics, 62, 790–816.

8.

Nyhan, B. (2010). “Why the ‘death panel’ myth wouldn’t die: Misinformation in the health care reform debate.” The Forum 8 (1): Article 5, 1-24.

9.

Meirick, P. C. (2016). “Motivated reasoning, accuracy, and updating in perceptions of Bush’s legacy.” Social Science Quarterly, 97, 699-713.

DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12301 10.

Meirick, P. C. & Bessarabova, E. (2016).

“Epistemic factors in selective exposure and political misperceptions on the right and left.”

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 16 (1), 36-68. DOI:10.1111/asap.12101 11.

Ibid.

12.

Meirick, P. C. (2013). “Motivated misperception? Party, education, partisan news, and belief in “death panels.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 90, 39–57.

13.

Meirick and Bessarabova, op.cit.

14.

Huckfeldt, R. & Sprague, J. (1995). “Citizens, politics and social communication: Information and influence in an election campaign.” New York: Cambridge University Press.

15.

Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. (2015).

“Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook.” Science, May 7, 2015: aaa1160. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1160

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Special Orders

REAL NEWS, FAKE NEWS FOR LAWMAKERS, NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS Mary Layton Atkinson | UNC Charlotte Mary Layton Atkinson is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Her research focuses broadly on the policymaking process in Congress with an emphasis on public opinion, issue framing and media coverage of policy debates and legislative agendas. She is the author of Combative Politics: The Media and Public Perceptions of Lawmaking (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

F

or American lawmakers, dealing with the press has long meant dealing with a mix of unflattering and fake news reports. The proliferation of cable and online news sources in recent decades has, however, increased the volume of both.

Unsubstantiated rumors and hoaxes now ricochet through cyberspace unimpeded. Meanwhile, the legitimate news media’s fixation on political conflict and drama sometimes distorts the reality of the policymaking process. Journalists’ focus on who is winning and who is losing in Washington paints lawmakers as self-interested and legislation as politically motivated.

The combination of fake and filtered reality creates an inhospitable media landscape for lawmakers seeking to implement reforms.

In this essay, I briefly discuss these two problems—fake news and conflict-focused news—from

the perspective of lawmakers. I then discuss some of the strategies politicians employ to overcome them. Finally, I argue that all of these strategies typically fail to debunk fake news, deflect negative coverage, and generate positive reports. I assert that the strategy with the most promise is the least prevalent in Washington today—bipartisan action.

The Mainstream Media Landscape Consumers have more options for news than ever before. The mainstream press now competes with cable news, online news, infotainment programming, and citizen journalists who post content on social media.

To attract readers and viewers — and the advertising dollars that come with them — traditional news sources have added more soft news and increased the entertainment value of their content.

HEADLINES ALLUDE TO BATTLES, BRAWLS, AND KNOCKOUTS ON THE HILL, TURNING A BLOOD SPORT SANS THE BLOOD INTO A MAIN ATTRACTION. 12

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Public affairs journalists have followed this trend toward entertainment by producing reports about lawmaking that center on conflict between political elites.

Headlines allude to battles, brawls and knockouts on the Hill, turning a blood sport sans the blood into a main attraction. This reporting enlivens public affairs by emphasizing the frequently combative process of policymaking. The “conflict frame” also conforms to norms of balanced reporting by telling two competing sides of a story. It is characterized by a focus on political strategy and tactics, the use of metaphors related to war and games, and discussions of the horse race in Washington.

Coverage of policy substance is minimized by the use of the conflict frame. The dynamic process of policymaking allows journalists to craft ongoing storylines that can be updated throughout the course of the 24-hour news cycle. The substance of a proposed law, however, may change little during the course of a policy debate. Straightforward coverage of a bill’s key components and its likely effects make up a minority of the reports journalists produce about Congress. Instead, reporters fold discussions of policy substances into the broader narrative of who is winning and losing on the Hill.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

This type of reporting serves many important purposes for journalists, but focusing on conflict in Washington also amplifies elite disagreement. In, In Defense of Pluralism, Éric Montpetit shows that public affairs reporters seek out the opinions of a few “celebrity politicians or other highly visible individuals taking unexpected positions, sometimes extreme ones.” 1 Participants in the policymaking process who have more moderate views, like bureaucrats and nongovernmental experts, are less likely to be quoted in the press. By excluding the views of these more moderate actors and focusing on the most controversial aspects of the debate, the news media sometimes oversells the idea of dysfunction in Washington. As Montpetit puts it, “The disagreements covered by the media are so out of proportion that they can only inspire a strong sense of disapproval among citizens.”2 A number of scholars have tested the hypothesis that the media’s focus on conflict is off-putting to the American public. Their work collectively shows a negative impact on public trust in government, support for lawmakers, and support for government institutions. 3 My own work finds that the news media’s use of the conflict frame portrays policymaking as a fundamentally political process with little connection to problem solving.

In Combative Politics, I use content analysis to show that news reports rarely focus on the link between policy proposals and the problems they are designed to redress.4 Because the conflict frame highlights the role of legislation in a larger partisan conflict and obscures its potential for problem solving, many Americans believe heavily debated proposals are designed solely to achieve political goals. For these reasons, many view policy debate as a sign of misplaced priorities and dysfunction in the government.

Former First Lady Hillary Clinton delivers a presentation on health care reform to members of Congress in September 1993. President Bill Clinton appointed her to lead a Task Force on National Health Care Reform, a move that drew considerable criticism from the proposal’s opponents.

The central thesis of the book is that information about the combative policymaking process — as reported by the press — has a negative impact on public support for the policies at the center of public debates. The news media’s focus on negative information about the ugly lawmaking process makes that information more plentiful and more salient in the minds of news consumers than is information about the plan’s substantive provisions. As a result, individuals who are disgusted with the tenor of the partisan debate often report disapproval of the plan itself, even when they like most of the bill’s specific provisions.

President Clinton’s failed Health Security Act provides a ready example of this dynamic.

An overwhelming 88 percent of survey respondents expressed support for the plan’s guarantee that individuals would not lose coverage when they changed jobs, 87 percent supported the guarantee that coverage could not be denied because of preexisting conditions, and 74 percent supported a system of universal coverage. 5 Yet, support

for the overall bill never approached such high levels and eroded over the course of the protracted debate.

Roughly 55 percent of Americans approved of the plan in the fall of 1993, but by the summer of 1994, that figure had slipped to roughly 40 percent.

Using a combination of experiments, case studies, and observational analyses, Combative Politics shows that, in this case and many others, information about rancorous disputes in Washington overwhelms information about the content of legislation in the formation of policy opinions, and systematically dampens public support.

The larger and longer the debate, the more precipitous the decline in support. This means that obstruction and timing are important, because slowing things down to extend debate predictably heightens support for the status quo. But this is only because the negative effect of conflict leads to declining approval for policies whose substantive provisions may have broad and unwavering public support. extensions | Winter 2018

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ABC News’ Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper holds up a copy of President Obama’s birth certificate, released by the White House in April 2011.

The birth certificate was at the center of a false claim that Obama was not born in the United States. (AP Photo).

Search term: “fake news” | Source: U.S. Newspapers via LexisNexis In fact, opponents of reform legislation often focus their objections on the policymaking process itself, arguing that the bill is being pushed through Congress with parliamentary tactics that limit minority party input. These claims are designed to bypass the substance of the law altogether and focus attention on the strategic, combative elements of lawmaking that the public dislikes — creating a symbiotic relationship between the opposition party and the press. For these reasons, lawmakers seeking to advance reforms often believe the news media are misrepresenting their intentions and hampering their efforts.

A (Very) Brief History of Fake News On top of concern about how their reforms will be portrayed by the mainstream press, lawmakers must contend with outright fabrications and inaccurate claims about their positions. False reports, wildly exaggerated stories, and hoaxes have a long history in American media. One infamous hoax appeared in the New York Sun in 1835. The paper ran a series of stories about 14

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the discovery of life on the moon, and although it included a small disclaimer identifying it as fiction, many readers missed the label and believed that extraterrestrials had been discovered.6 Other fake news stories appearing in New York papers during the 19th century had more political implications. During the Cuban War for Independence, for example, accounts of Spanish aggression were exaggerated by Cuban sources seeking to sway public opinion against Spain.7 U.S. journalists looking for exciting copy ran with these accounts, producing front-page stories that were so exaggerated they bore little resemblance to actual events.

Two centuries later, fake news on a wide range of topics continues to be a mainstay in American media.

One of the most persistent fake news stories of the past decade claimed that President Obama

was not born in the United States.

Throughout his time in office, many doubted Obama’s citizenship and, therefore, the legitimacy of his presidency. President Obama’s landmark healthcare law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was also the target of numerous criticisms that had no factual basis.

For instance, the phony claim that the law would lead to the convening of “death panels” — groups of bureaucrats with the power to make life or death decisions about patient care — was widely circulated.

Other false reports in recent memory include the misidentification of the Boston marathon bombers.

The accusations against two innocent men began on online message boards, circulated through social media sites, and were ultimately repeated by the mainstream press. A false report that Sarah Palin accepted a job at Al Jazeera also duped the mainstream press in 2014. A Washington Post blogger reported the claim as fact. 8 In other instances, professional journalists shone light on fake news. In 2014, the National Journal revealed, and the mainstream press reported on, fake news websites created by the National Republican Congressional Committee. The campaign websites attacking Democratic candidates were designed by the NRCC to look like legitimate news sources.9 Despite its prevalence, the modern proliferation of fake news did not capture public attention until 2016. That year, journalists worked to track and debunk false reports related to the political season, causing print news stories

FALSE REPORTS, WILDLY EXAGGERATED STORIES, AND HOAXES HAVE A LONG HISTORY IN AMERICAN MEDIA.

Media Strategies for Political Reform Given the media landscape described above, lawmakers often find it easiest to do their work behind closed doors, away from the press. Recent examples of lawmakers working privately include House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama’s failed attempt at resolving the fiscal cliff in 2011, attempted immigration reform by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” in 2013, and Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray’s 2013 budget deal.10 More recently, Congressional Republicans worked secretly to draft a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act during the summer of 2017. In that instance, not only was the legislation drafted behind closed doors, it was slated

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mentioning “fake news” to increase six-fold over the preceding year (see Figure 1). That effort continued into 2017, and brought revelations about Russian-backed political ads, posts and reports that reached American voters during the 2016 campaign.

In the historical examples above, and in the modern ones, fake news is often politically motivated. It can be deployed strategically to dampen public support for policies and politicians. And today, just as in the past, foreign entities are sometimes behind these plans. What is novel, however, is the speed with which dubious reports circulate. Today, rumors can spread like wildfire across the internet as they are forwarded, liked, retweeted and posted by news consumers who do not realize the reports are phony.

Even professional journalists, who labor under the arduous demands of the 24-hour news cycle, sometimes fall victim to fake reports. This undermines the credibility of the mainstream press and further confuses average Americans struggling to determine which sources to trust.

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Fig. 1: Articles Mentioning Fake News

to receive little public consideration after its release. The Republican leadership broke with convention by planning to bring the legislation to a vote without public debate, committee hearings or markup.

Disagreements within the GOP ultimately killed the plan before it came to a vote.

Hashing out policy details privately allows lawmakers to weigh options and work out agreements between themselves without providing fodder for the press.

This strategy is so ubiquitous in Washington today that former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi recently described working in secret as the “norm.”

He told a Newsweek reporter, “That’s become particularly true in the age of the 24-hour news cycle that includes dissection of every incremental adjustment or compromise under consideration, and of a political environment that is growing ever more hyper-partisan.” 11 Similarly, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters last June that negotiations over the ACA repeal were being held privately because press coverage stymies progress. “There are many ideas being discussed and rather

than battle them out in the press,” he said, “…the conversations we’re having are productive.” 12 Fear of how the lawmaking process will be portrayed by the press, political rivals and online trolls, regularly sends policymakers underground. But even when details of policy proposal are kept secret, political controversy attracts media attention. As discussed above, reporters are less interested in covering policy substance than in covering the conflict-laden process of lawmaking. The GOP’s failed Affordable Care Act repeal illustrates this. The strategy of holding closeddoor sessions kept the details of the health care plan out of the press until the bill was released publicly. But the unusual process — and complaints about it from Congressional Democrats — made headlines.

When they can’t keep their plans quiet, lawmakers are increasingly able to reach their constituents directly via their websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

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Source: The New York Times via LexisNexis Fig. 2: News Coverage of Nearly Unanimous, Bipartisan Laws

awareness of concern over societal problems (like underemployment, gun violence, and so on), and their plans to address them. Policy details are frequently offered in these spaces, as are personal details about lawmakers and their families that serve to humanize them.

Social media platforms also allow politicians to respond to negative media coverage — and to refute false or misleading reports — as quickly as their thumbs can type.

The ability to disseminate a rapid, unfiltered response to criticism has made Twitter, in particular, a favorite form of communication for President Trump. But this strategy has the most potential for success with a sympathetic audience because those who trust the source—the individual politician — will be the most receptive to his or her message.13 Protestations about fake news and positive messages about problem-solving will have little impact on those who distrust the messenger. In short, lawmakers are unlikely to change hearts and minds through direct appeals to constituents.

The Power of Bipartisanship

Source: The New York Times via LexisNexis Fig. 3: News Coverage of Contentious Laws 16

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Lawmakers seeking to correct falsehoods about the policies they propose, and to avoid press coverage of “every incremental adjustment” to them, would be wise to work cooperatively with members of the opposite party.

Bipartisan efforts can effectively challenge fake news and stem the tide of conflict-focused reporting.

Using a series of experiments, Adam Berinsky shows that politicians who stand to benefit from false claims are the best situated to debunk them.14 For instance, he finds that Republicans are the most successful at correcting the misconception that President Obama was not born in the United States and

that Democrats are best able to refute the idea that the Bush administration had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. In both instances, the sources gained credibility by working against their interests. If lawmakers would refute fake news, even when they stand to benefit from it, they could work collectively to set the record straight. In the end, every member of Congress and all Americans would benefit from their efforts.

In the current political environment, encouraging lawmakers to work together sounds impractical. But in recent history, roughly as many important pieces of legislation have been passed into law by broad bipartisan coalitions as by narrow partisan majorities. An examination of David Mayhew’s list of important laws shows that between 1981 and 2010, 29 landmark pieces of legislation received nearly unanimous support in roll-call votes taken in both the House and Senate (at least 90 percent support in both chambers).15 By comparison, 32 important laws were highly contentious and passed with support from slim partisan majorities (no more than 60 percent support in the House and 65 percent in the Senate). Those in the former group, however, have provided far less fodder for the conflict-focused press. Working across the aisle not only offers a possible means to combat fake news, it also has the potential to reduce media scrutiny lawmakers view as an impediment to progress.

I demonstrate this in Combative Politics by examining levels of news coverage garnered by the two categories of laws outlined above — those with nearly unanimous support and those that were highly contentious. Mayhew used the end-of-year Congressional wrapup reports published in The New York Times and Washington Post to compile the list of important laws

from which these categories were drawn. This means that reporters viewed each piece of legislation as consequential at the time of its passage. But key word searches of The New York Times archives show that the total amount of coverage each law received varied widely depending upon the level of partisan conflict surrounding it.

Figures 2 and 3 show the results of the key word searches used to identify the respective number of articles that mentioned each law during the Congressional session in which it passed. On average, 77 articles per session referenced laws that passed with broad support.

In contrast, contentious laws were mentioned in 407 articles per Congressional session—a mean that is five times that of the “nearly unanimous” group. Even the lowconflict law that received the highest level of news coverage, the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, failed to garner as much coverage as the average contentious law.

The majority of important laws received levels of support in Congress that fell somewhere between these two extremes, receiving some bipartisan support but not an overwhelming majority of votes cast. Nevertheless, the exercise demonstrates that the parties have managed to generate compromises and build coalitions during an era characterized by intense polarization. It also shows that when they have done so, the news media have granted lawmakers a reprieve from the wallto-wall, process-focused coverage they often try to avoid. If lawmakers can find a way to work together now, despite the current political climate, they may find that they are able to dispel fake news reports, ease scrutiny from the mainstream press, and accomplish some of their legislative goals.

Notes 1.

Montpetit, Éric. In Defense of Pluralism: Policy Disagreement and Its Media Coverage.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): Pg 5.

2.

Ibid 3. e.g. Cappell, Joseph N. and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 1996. “News Frames, Political Cynicism, and Media Cynicism.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science July: 546-571; Forgette, Richard and Jonathan S. Morris. 2006. “High-Conflict Television News and Public Opinion.” Political Research Quarterly 59(3): 447-459.

4.

Atkinson, Mary Layton. Combative Politics: The Media and Public Perceptions of Lawmaking. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 5.

ABC News. “ABC news poll, September 1994 (ICPSR 3854).”

6.

Uberti, David. “The Read History of Fake News.” Columbia Journalism Review.

December 15, 2016. https://www.cjr.org/ special_report/fake_news_history.php 7.

Ibid 8.

Funt, Peter. “Fake news has become a cottage industry.” Montgomery County Herald. March 31, 2013.

9.

Fitzpatrick, Jack. “NRCC Creates Fake News Sites to Criticize Candidates.” Hotline: National Journal’s Daily Briefing on Politics.

August 13, 2014. https://www.nationaljournal. com/s/73018/nrcc-launches-fake-news-sitesattack-democratic-candidates 10.

Scott, Dylan. “The Senate GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare: don’t let anyone see their bill.” Vox. June 13, 2107. https://www.vox.com/policy-andpolitics/2017/6/13/15785332/senaterepublicans-health-care-bill-secret 11.

Cadei, Emily. “Senate Health Care Bill: How the ‘Secret’ Draft Process Endangers Obamacare Repeal Plan.” Newsweek. June 22, 2017. http://www.newsweek.com/secretsenate-healthcare-bill-628141 12.

Scott, Dylan. “The Senate GOP’s plan to repeal Obamacare: don’t let anyone see their bill.” Vox. June 13, 2107. https://www.vox.com/policy-andpolitics/2017/6/13/15785332/senaterepublicans-health-care-bill-secret 13.

Druckman, James. “On The Limits Of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?” The Journal of Politics 63: 1041-1066, 2001.

14.

Berinsky, Adam J. “Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation.” British Journal of Political Science. 47(2): 241-262, 2017.

15.

Mayhew, David R. Divided We Govern, Second Edition. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). I use the “first sweep” laws because journalists viewed them as important at the time of their passage, and only include those for which a roll-call vote was taken. This likely decreased the number of bipartisan laws identified because voice votes are frequently taken when legislation has broad support. The lists of important enactments for each Congress and the final passage vote totals are provided by David Mayhew on his personal web site: http:// davidmayhew.commons.yale.edu/ datasetsdivided-we-govern/

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Special Orders

CORRECTING MISINFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA: SUCCESSES,

CHALLENGES, AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS Leticia Bode | Georgetown University and Emily K. Vraga | George Mason University

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Photo credit: Pixabay.com

I

n the wake of the 2016 election, scholars, policymakers, and citizens alike have voiced unease about the existence, spread and effects of misinformation on the American public. A study by the Pew Research Center following the election found that 71 percent of U.S. adults report seeing “completely made up” information online at least sometimes, and 14 percent admit to sharing a political news story they knew to be false.

These concerns are heightened by the perception that fake news is gaining traction with the public and may sometimes supersede legitimate news in terms of engagement. Indeed, Craig Silverman, founding editor of BuzzFeed News, reported that in the last three months of the presidential campaign, Facebook’s top-performing fake election news stories generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News, and others.

Research into how to correct misinformation that is shared and spread on social media

becomes increasingly important.

Our research does just that, investigating different methods for correcting misinformation on social media, where it is being shared, seen, and consumed.

What is Observational Correction?

Notably, social media allows for what we call “observational correction.” While correction of misinformation is notoriously difficult,1 social media allows for influence beyond the person sharing the misinformation. That

is, the vast majority of people who see a correction on social media are not those who shared it in the first place. Therefore, they are unlikely to disagree with the correction or to counter-argue its points. 2 As a result, even if the original poster of misinformation continues to believe the story they posted, others will see the claim being challenged and perhaps become more skeptical regarding the quality of the information.

According to the Pew Research Center Internet Project survey, the average Facebook user has 338

Leticia Bode is an assistant professor in the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the intersection of communication, technology, and political behavior.

friends, facilitating large networks with the potential to amplify the effect of the correction and see the incorrect claim being challenged.

Further, observational correction on social media should be especially effective because it often occurs immediately, before people have an opportunity to come to believe the misinformation and build a rationale to support their mistaken beliefs. Another benefit of immediate correction on social media is that it can reach the same audience or even a larger audience given the ways in which social media algorithms function. In contrast, correction can be difficult once misinformation is accepted and reinforced among people in like-minded enclaves beyond the reach of credible experts. 3 Social media is a popular place for sharing common topics about which misinformation abounds, including politics, health and science news. Because social media platforms consist of relatively diverse networks as compared to offline or face-to-face networks, 4 there is potential for correction to happen organically because social media brings together people with diverse backgrounds. They tend to have different views on controversial topics and different responses to misinformation.

Therefore, there is likely to be

someone among the audience viewing the original post who recognizes misinformation and may be willing to share their knowledge to improve information quality.

On the other hand, correction of misinformation can be difficult.

Often, people still believe misinformation, even after accepting a correction, 5 and correction may sometimes even result in people believing in the misinformation more strongly than they did prior to correction.

Nyhan and Reifler illustrated that point in a study involving people who were told weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq.

The researchers found many of those people not only maintained their beliefs, but their opinions grew even stronger. This resistance to correction is especially pronounced in situations where the information in question is important to the individual’s identity — this makes correction feel more like a personal

Emily K. Vraga is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University. Her research focuses on how individuals process news and information about contentious political, scientific, and health issues. She tests methods to limit biased processing, to correct misinformation, and to encourage attention to more diverse content online.

attack than a desire for truth and accuracy.

Finally, just because people know that misinformation occurs on social media may not make them willing to correct it when they see it online. Doing so could prompt a difficult conversation with a friend, family member or make them vulnerable to angry responses from supporters of the misinformation. We know people hesitate to address politics on social media for fear of angry rants, 6 and we suspect the same rationale may act as a deterrent to posting correct information about controversial issues.

Given these issues, our research focuses on different methods of correcting misinformation on social media. We will outline those below, along with proposals for how we think Congress, both as individual members and as a policymaking body, can act in ways that will support such correction.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS A POPULAR PLACE FOR SHARING COMMON TOPICS ABOUT WHICH MISINFORMATION ABOUNDS, INCLUDING POLITICS, HEALTH, AND SCIENCE NEWS.

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Belief in Misinformation

efforts, they are only effective at correcting misinformation when they Figure 1: Correction by another user requires expert provide an expert source in a link sources (see Figure 1). 8 This seems to boost 4.2 their own credibility — basically, it 4.07 4.1 convinces people that they know 4 what they are talking about. Whether 3.84 3.9 expertise comes directly from the 3.8 experts or indirectly through linked 3.7 information, it plays a clear role in 3.54 3.6 corrective efforts on social media.

3.5 Because of these findings, we 3.4 think that members of Congress 3.3 could have a role to play in 3.2 Control Correction without sources Correction with sources misinformation correction on social Experimental Condition media. Although public confidence Note: the variable on the vertical axis (belief in misinformation) is measured 1 to 7, where higher and trust in Congress as an values indicate greater misperceptions. institution remains near historic lows Note: the variable on the vertical axis (belief in misinformation) is measured 1 to 7, where higher on many public opinion polls, trust values indicate greater misperceptions. in individual members of Congress is still relatively high according Zika virus,” and “The Zika outbreak to similar polls. For that reason, a Correcting Misinformation was caused by natural factors.”

We correction coming from a member of on Social Media then combined the three measures to Congress might have the same effect calculate misperceptions about the One of the most effective ways the CDC had in our experiment — origin of the Zika virus. to correct misinformation is by using serving as an expert source with high We found, not surprisingly, that expert sources. Highly credible credibility. expert correction was significantly experts should be more effective Because most members of more effective than correction at making corrections than those Congress now use Twitter and from a nonexpert user. It is also who are deemed less credible or to Facebook, we think this is a worth noting that people who have less expertise. In order to test good opportunity to call out bad saw the CDC’s correct information this mechanism, we recruited 1,384 information. And we suspect, rated the agency just as high in students to participate in our study, given our findings with the CDC terms of credibility as those who and showed them a simulated Twitter experiment, that the credibility of did not see content from the CDC, feed.7 The feed featured a number of an individual member should not be which suggests that weighing in on typical social media posts, as well as harmed by correcting misinformation social media does not negatively a post that included misinformation found on social media. Given the impact perceptions of credible about the origin of the Zika virus polarized environment in which organizations. pandemic of 2016. We then varied Congress currently operates, we On a related note, our research whether participants saw correction cannot say for sure that this will shows that when individual social from another user, from the Centers be effective, but we would still media users engage in corrective for Disease Control’s (CDC) official encourage experimentation in this Twitter account, from neither, or from both. Before the experiment, we ask them a series of three questions about their thoughts on the origin of the Zika virus, and then WAYS TO CORRECT MISINFORMATION IS BY ask again after the experiment to see if their responses would change.

USING EXPERT SOURCES. HIGHLY CREDIBLE Specifically, we asked them to agree or disagree on a seven-point scale EXPERTS SHOULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE AT MAKING with the following statements: “The CORRECTIONS THAN THOSE WHO ARE DEEMED release of GMO mosquitos caused the Zika outbreak,” “GMO mosquitos LESS CREDIBLE OR TO HAVE LESS EXPERTISE. are to blame for the spread of the

ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE

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SciCheck FACTCHECKING SCIENCE-BASED CLAIMS

SciCheck is a service of FactCheck. org and focuses exclusively on false and misleading scientific claims that are made by partisans to influence public policy. It was among the first to dispel rumors that genetically modified mosquitoes were responsible for the Zika virus outbreak in 2015 and 2016. According to SciCheck, the false report was first posted on Jan. 25, 2016 by the news aggregator Reddit and subsequently reported by other media outlets. SciCheck published a post, correcting the false claim.

Figure 2: Misinformation about causes of Zika is reduced by platform and user corrections 4.2 4.1

Belief in Misinformation

area. Members of Congress could also make corrective information easily available to their constituents as long as the information is clear, well-cited and easily shareable.

A second potential method of correcting misinformation originates from social media platforms themselves. In recent months, Facebook and Twitter have taken various steps to mitigate the dissemination and impact of fake news on their respective platforms.

They are not the first, however.

We identified a platform-based mechanism that was effective at correcting misinformation as far back as 2015. 9 Facebook uses an algorithm to suggest additional links of interest when a user clicks on a link within the platform. This function, known alternately as related stories or related links, is meant to offer additional information that may be of interest to the user, given her assumed interest in the original link.

4.07

4 3.9 3.8 3.7

3.6

3.62

Platform Correction

User Correction

3.6 3.5 3.4 3.3

Control

Experimental Condition

Note: the variable on the vertical axis (belief in misinformation) is measured 1 to 7, where higher values indicate greater misperceptions.

Note: the variable on the vertical axis (belief in misinformation) is measured 1 to 7, where higher values indicate greater misperceptions.

The algorithm’s inputs are unknown outside of Facebook, but they generally seem to be topic-based.

For example, if you click on a link about a particular sports team, it will show you other articles about that team. This could lead to the information contained in related stories to be entirely confirmatory, but in practice it does not seem to work that way.

Using methods similar to those described above (varying multiple versions of a simulated Facebook News Feed for 524 student participants and 377 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk), we tested whether corrective information in the descriptions of the related links could effectively help people update their misinformed beliefs. Specifically, the original link contained misinformation about either genetically modified foods (headline: “Will genetically modified foods make you sick? A story of GMO corn-induced illness”) or the relationship between vaccines and autism (headline: “Robert Kennedy Jr.’s belief in autism-vaccine connection, and its political peril”).

When users viewed corrective information in the preview of the related links (e.g., Snopes: “GMO’s do NOT cause illness;” American Medical

Association: “No link between GMO’s and disease”), they were less likely to believe misinformation about the relationship between genetically modified foods and illness (see Figure 2). Facebook has since used this information to provide greater corrective information from certified third-party fact checkers in its related links functionality.10 Part of why we think the platform is effective at correcting misinformation is due to a phenomenon called automation bias, which just means that people tend to believe something coming from a machine or an algorithm more than they do something coming from a person.11 Applied more broadly, effective mechanisms of correction might take advantage of this natural bias toward believing information that comes from a platform, or that is automatically generated. Consistent with the recent hearings on Capitol Hill, policy solutions to mitigate the effects of fake news should attempt to involve platforms in the process of solving this complicated problem.

However, it is worth noting that correction did not work for the second issue we considered — the relationship between vaccines and autism. Despite being roundly debunked by dozens of medical extensions | Winter 2018

21

hopefully creating norms that reward correcting misinformation.

Likewise, governmental agencies and congressional offices could consider ways to make credible information on a topic more readily available to the public, so people can easily share expert information that responds to misinformation.

There are several examples of such campaigns: The World Health Organization posted a page in response to rumors about the Zika virus, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency posted a rumor management page for Hurricane Harvey in the United States. We see both of these as fruitful endeavors.

Supporters rally behind British doctor Andrew Wakefield who lost his license to practice medicine in 2010 for publishing fraudulent claims linking autism with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. Wakefield’s research was published in 1998, but his work was not retracted until more than 10 years later, which may be why many people still believe Wakefield’s claim. (AP Photo)

Likewise, congressional offices themselves could promote fact pages with correct information on a range of controversial topics.

This may not only provide accurate information to those interested, and corrective information to those

studies, and the original research on

organic correction of misinformation

who want to respond when they see

which it was based being retracted,

to take place within social media,

misinformation, but it can also drive

this myth about the origins of

even absent intervention from

traffic to congressional websites.

autism continues to thrive. We

outside sources like the CDC or the

Given the high level of partisan

think the fact that it is such an

platforms themselves.

polarization in the country, this

12

established myth could contribute

Given how diverse online

might best be executed by means

to the difficulty of correcting it. This

networks can be, there is good

of bipartisan fact sheets, produced

offers another policy suggestion:

potential for social correction to

jointly by members on both sides of

misinformation needs to be corrected

happen. A diversity of opinion should

the aisle.

early, before it becomes ingrained as

mean more people may recognize

a salient belief for people.

misinformation as incorrect and

focuses on health misinformation,

weigh in to correct it. Still, thinking

which may act differently than

impact other social media users can

about the incentive process here is

political misinformation, in terms of

have in correcting misinformation.

key. Some people may recognize

the mechanisms of correction. Health

In two different studies, we consider

misinformation but not take the

information, for the most part, is not

whether and when correction

time to correct it, either because

strongly related to one’s identity;

by another social media user is

that takes resources (looking up a

most people do not base their sense

effective. In general, we find that

source debunking the information,

of self on whether or not the Zika

user corrections are effective when 1)

writing a brief corrective post), or

outbreak was caused by genetically

the user provides a link to a credible

because they worry about the social

modified mosquitos. But individuals

source, and 2) more than one user

consequences of correcting. A public

may well base part of their identity

weighs in to correct misinformation

service campaign to encourage users

on whether there were weapons

(See Figure 2) 13 . Our results show

to correct misinformation when they

of mass destruction found in Iraq

this type of user correction is

see it could be an effective way to

or whether President Obama was

effective on both Facebook and

harness the power of the crowds

born in the United States. In these

Twitter. This offers promise for the

in the fight against fake news,

instances, motivated reasoning is

Finally, we also consider the

22

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We should note that our research

WHILE MISINFORMATION AFFECTS BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS, EITHER IS LIKELY TO BE MORE RESISTANT TO CORRECTIVE INFORMATION WHEN IT AFFECTS THE WAY THEY SEE THEIR PARTISAN IDENTITY. more likely to pose a difficult barrier

forward is encouragement of these

to the process of correcting and

behaviors for each of the effective

believing corrective information in

correctors that we have identified.

general. This is particularly true when

This is perhaps most relevant in

misinformation taps into a partisan

the case of experts. For that group,

identity, which is increasingly salient

Congress could offer funding to

in our hyperpolarized society.

high-credibility government agencies

While misinformation affects

like the CDC, in order to better

both Republicans and Democrats,14

allow them the resources needed to

either is likely to be more resistant

pursue corrective action on social

to corrective information when

media. We would expect that these

it affects the way they see their

effects would extend to members

partisan identity. There is also often

of Congress, who could engage in

less expert consensus when it comes

correction as appropriate on social

to political information, as compared

media. Further, we have reason to

to health information, which can

believe that the expertise effect

decrease the level of credibility of

extends outside of government

corrective sources. But this is not

institutions as well. Partnering with

to say that correction should not be

nonprofit organizations could also

pursued for political misinformation,

be an effective means of combatting

as the implications are just as

misinformation in the public arena.

important as those for health

Additional research is needed

misinformation. We also think this

to determine how to maximize

reinforces the importance of experts,

corrective action while minimizing

who can speak to members within

the potential for negative effects.

their party without accusations of

It is also noteworthy that we only

partisan bias. That also applies to

consider one broad issue area —

nonpartisan experts who can speak

health information — and cannot

to both sides and effectively function

speak to how well these mechanisms

as arbitrators of truth.

might apply to other contentious areas like political issues. Having

Conclusions In general, our research offers optimism on the subject of combatting misinformation on social media. Experts, algorithms, and other users can all be effective actors in the fight against misinformation in these venues, and each has a role to play. We think a promising avenue

said that, the accuracy of health information should itself be a concern for Congress, given that misinformation around public health issues leads to undesirable behaviors that put the broader population at risk.15

Notes 1.

Brendan Nyhan, Jason Reifler, Sean Richey, and Gary L. Freed. “Effective messages n vaccine promotion: A randomized trial.”

Pediatrics 133, (2014): e835.

2.

Charles S. Taber, and Milton Lodge.

“Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50, no.3 (2006): 755.

3.

Jacek Radzikowski, Anthony Stefanidis, Kathryn H. Jacobsen, Arie Croitoru, Andrew Crooks, and Paul L. Delamater. “The measles vaccination narrative in Twitter: A quantitative analysis.” JMIR Public Health and Surveillance 2, no. 1 (2016): e1.

4.

Pablo Barbera. “How social media reduces mass political polarization: Evidence from Germany, Spain, and the U.S.” Working paper (2014) http://pablobarbera.com/static/ barbera_polarization_APSA.pdf; Pasquale De Meo, Emilio Ferrara, Giacomo Fiumara, and Alessandro Provetti. “On Facebook, most ties are weak.” Communications of the ACM 57, no.

11, (2014): 78.

5.

Emily A. Thorson. “Belief echoes: The persistent effects of corrected misinformation.”

Political Communication 33, (2015): 460.

6.

Emily K. Vraga, Kjerstin Thorson, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, and Emily Gee. “How individual sensitivities to disagreement shape youth political expression on Facebook.”

Computers in Human Behavior 45, (2015): 281.

7.

Emily K. Vraga, and Leticia Bode.

“Using Expert Sources to Correct Health Misinformation in Social Media.” Science Communication 39, No. 5, (2017): 621.

8.

Emily K. Vraga, and Leticia Bode. “I do not believe you: how providing a source corrects health misperceptions across social media platforms.” Information, Communication, and Society, (2017).

9.

Leticia Bode, and Emily K. Vraga. “In related news, that was wrong: The correction of misinformation through related stories functionality in social media.” Journal of Communication 65, no. 4, (2015): 619.

10.

Will Oremus. “Facebook’s Latest Move to Fight Fake News Might Finally Be the Right One.” Slate, August 3, 2017, http://www. slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/08/03/ facebook_s_related_articles_are_a_better_ way_to_fight_fake_news.html 11.

Kate Goddard, Abdul Roudsari, and Jeremy C. Wyatt. “Automation bias: A systematic review of frequency, effect mediators, and mitigators.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 19, (2012): 121.

12.

Institute of Medicine. “Immunization and safety review: Vaccines and Autism.” Institute of Medicine, 2004, http://www.iom.edu/ Reports/2004/Immunization-Safety-ReviewVaccines-and-Autism.aspx.

13.

Vraga and Bode, “I do not believe you.” and Leticia Bode, and Emily K. Vraga. “See Something, Say Something: Correction of Global Health Misinformation on Social Media.”

Health Communication, (2017).

14.

Erik C. Nisbet, Kathryn E. Cooper, and R. Kelly Garrett. “The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis) trust science.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658, (2015): 36.

15.

Graham Dixon, and Christopher Clarke.

“The effect of falsely balanced reporting of the autism–vaccine controversy on vaccine safety perceptions and behavioral intentions.” Health Education Research 28, no. 2, (2013): 352.

extensions | Winter 2018

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For the Record

DANIEL CARPENTER DELIVERS

2017 ROTHBAUM LECTURE

THE AMERICAN PETITION: SINEW OF OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

By Cindy Simon Rosenthal | Director and Curator

P

rofessor Daniel Carpenter delivered a wide-ranging exploration of political engagement by Native Americans, women, religious minorities, and capitalists as a featured speaker in the Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture series sponsored last fall by the Carl Albert Center.

Carpenter, the Allie S. Freed professor of government and director of social sciences at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, served as the center’s 18th Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecturer, delivering three lectures on Oct. 17, 18, and 19.

The biennial lectureship is central to the mission of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It brings together scholars, students and citizens on important questions regarding the health of the nation’s representative democracy.

Since 1983, the center has welcomed some of political science’s most able and discerning observers of American political life.

Carpenter’s work on petitioning has recently been featured in Perspectives on Politics, American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, and Studies in American Political Development. His work on petitioning by women in the antislavery movement was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Mary Parker Follett Prize in 2014 for the best article on political history.

Within his three-lecture series, Carpenter traced how the right to petition came to be included in the First Amendment, alongside the right to free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to assemble. Moreover, he demonstrated how petitioners influenced the inclusion of religious freedom in the First Amendment, prohibiting Congress from prescribing an established religion, guaranteeing the free exercise of religion in the early republic.

He also demonstrated how a culture of petitioning flourished in the republic’s early years and was adopted by captains of business during the bank wars of the 1830s, presaging the powerful role corporations would assume as petitioners in the future.

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In his final lecture, Carpenter showed how the indigenous tribes of North America used petitions as instruments of diplomacy to protect their sovereignty during the period of forced removal in the 19th century.

“Elections alone are radically insufficient to ensure representative government,” Carpenter concluded, echoing the themes of the Rothbaum lectureships themselves.

In addition to his work on petitioning, the professor is accomplished in the field of reputation and public policy. He is the author of Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA, which won the Social Science History Association’s Allan Sharlin Memorial Award.

His book, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies 1862-1928, was honored with the American Political Science Association’s Gladys Kammerer Prize, and the International Political Science Association’s Charles Levine Prize.

Carpenter upheld the lectureship’s standard of excellent scholarship. In addition to his three lectures, he met with faculty and graduate students from the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Political Science, as well as Native American leaders and students from the Department of Native American Studies.

He also spoke about the role of lobbying and rulemaking in the contemporary corporate regulation process during a lecture he gave to members of the Michael J. Price College of Business.

Carpenter’s Rothbaum lectures will be submitted for publication by The University of Oklahoma Press, adding an important contribution to the scholarly discussion on the role of petitioning in American political development.

Last fall also marked the publication of Jack N. Rakove’s book, A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison, University of Oklahoma Press. Professor Rakove was the 14th Rothbaum lecturer and his book joins 12 other distinguished books in the series.

2

3

4

5

6

Photos courtesy of Carl Albert Center

1

1. Director Cindy Simon Rosenthal kicks off the 18th biennial Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series.

2. Distinguished lecturer Daniel Carpenter of Harvard University addresses the audience during his first lecture.

3. (Left to right) Rosenthal, Carpenter, Joel Jankowsky with center faculty Chuck Finocchiaro and Mike Crespin before the first lecture. Jankowsky, Julian Rothbaum’s son, endowed the lecture series to honor his father.

4. Joel Jankowsky is joined by his daughter Jill Jankowsky (left) and his son David Jankowsky (right) at the dinner to celebrate the lectureship.

5. Provost Kyle Harper welcomes the dinner guests on behalf of OU. 6. Associate Director Crespin (right) moderates a panel discussion with Carpenter and Harper on the historical roots of petitioning. extensions | Winter 2018

25

For the Record

NEWS FROM THE CENTER Katherine McRae | Director of Administration

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Michelle Whyman won the Over the summer and fall 2017 Carl Albert Dissertation semesters, the Congressional Award for Best Dissertation Archives and Political in Legislative Studies for “The Collections benefited from Roots of Legislative Durability: the work of a great team of How Information, Deliberation, graduate and undergraduate and Compromise Create Laws students. Heather Bateman, that Last.” a graduate student pursuing Her research explores a her master’s degree in library central question: “What makes and information studies (MLIS), law last?” She finds that laws handled special projects. are more durable and avoid Lindsay Marshall, a history repeal, court nullification, or Ph.D. student, played a key role executive branch resistance in the center’s archival social Michelle Whyman was awarded the 2017 Carl when legislators seek out media efforts, and Catherine Albert Dissertation Award for Best Dissertation diverse sources of information, Dean, an MLIS graduate in Legislative Studies. In the photo, Whyman is congratulated by Carl Albert Center Director engage in deliberation student, led a digital collection Cindy Rosenthal, Associate Director Michael and reach a substantive processing project.

Crespin and Associate Professor Chuck compromise.

Several students processed Finocchiaro.

Whyman received her Ph.D. former Sen. David L. Boren’s from the University of Texas, collection. They include: Austin in 2016, and is currently Rebekah Russell, a library and as well as other participating archives a visiting assistant professor with the information studies undergraduate; at arc.ou.edu.

Political Institutions and Public Choice MeKenzie Sloan, a political science Assistant curator and senior Program at Duke University. undergraduate; Amanda Venegas, archivist Nathan Gerth and archivist The award is presented by a history undergraduate; Vivian Rachel Henson attended the annual the American Political Science Feng, an MLIS graduate student; Congressional Papers Section of Association’s Legislative Studies and Maya Bhandary, a psychology the Society of American Archivists Section and is sponsored by the Carl undergraduate. meeting in Portland, Oregon on Albert Center. Director Cindy Simon Heather Walser, a history Ph.D. July 26. Henson then attended Rosenthal, associate director Mike student, supported Director Cindy the general Society of American Crespin and associate professor Simon Rosenthal and Gerth in Archivists meeting from July 26-28 Chuck Finocchiaro were on hand to teaching the archives-based course, in Portland. congratulate professor Whyman at “Congress: Policy, Politics & the On Oct. 28, Henson represented the association’s annual meeting in Constitution.” The course focused the center at the first-ever Oklahoma San Francisco in September. on the passage of the 1964 Civil Archives Bazaar. The family-friendly Rights Act. event was held at the Oklahoma The archives reading room is History Center in Oklahoma City, Archives Projects and now open on an appointment-only where participants promoted local Activities basis on Tuesdays, Wednesdays archives, libraries, and museums. and Thursdays. Please contact The archives recently received a Over the summer, the Carl Albert the archives at (405) 325-6372 or grant from the Oklahoma Historical Center Archives, the American Organ complete the scheduling form at Records Advisory Board, Oklahoma Institute Archives and the University ou.edu/content/carlalbertcenter/ Department of Libraries, and the of Oklahoma Library co-founded a congressional-collection.html to make National Historical Publications and new database for archival materials an appointment.

Records Commission.

The grant was called Archival Research Collections. used to purchase a Forensic Recovery Patrons can now view the center’s of Evidence Device for advanced congressional and political collections processing of digital records.

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extensions | Winter 2018

The Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) welcomed two new student members to the team, Grace Olaleye as graduate assistant and Jensen Armstrong as undergraduate assistant. Olaleye, a 2017 graduate of the National Education for Women (N.E.W.) Leadership program is pursuing her degree in construction science and city and regional planning. Armstrong, a junior public relations major, comes to the center from OU’s Learn & Earn program, which gives university departments the opportunity to design student positions that offer real-world job experiences which align with a student’s professional goals.

The WLI is again partnering with the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition to co-present the “Pipeline to Politics” program on Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018 in Oklahoma City. The program is designed for professional women and community volunteers who are interested in increasing their public service and community leadership. its goal is to address the historic under-representation of women in politics and public life by providing participants with necessary tools to enter, stay in and emerge from the political pipeline.

The WLI raised more than $10,000 through the OU Thousands Strong online fundraising platform.

The campaign ran from Oct. 24 to Nov. 24 and all funds raised will be used to support N.E.W. Leadership.

Donations to the WLI program are tax deductible and those who are interested may donate directly at bit.ly/GiveWLI. Applications are now being accepted to the N.E.W. Leadership program to be held May 18-22, 2018. The program is open to undergraduate women from across Oklahoma who are interested in getting involved with politics and public service. This five-day residential program, offered at no cost to participants, will feature prominent Oklahoma women officeholders, public administrators, community advocates, and

business leaders. The application deadline is March 9. Visit www. ou.edu/wli to apply or for more information.

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Women’s Leadership Initiative

Civic Engagement Fellows

The Civic Civic engagement fellow Madison Morrow and Engagement Fellows Carl Albert Center Civic Engagement Director for the 2017-18 Lauren Schueler accept voter registration academic year are awards from Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education Chancellor Glen Johnson and Regent Brenda Lozano, Ron White. From left are Johnson, Morrow, Madison Morrow Schueler, and White. and Ryleigh Navert.

The fellows led voter registration efforts on and learned how organizations the Norman campus and competed interact with the broader community. in a voter registration contest The students also attended weekly sponsored by the Oklahoma State seminars and briefings with leaders Regents for Higher Education through from the nonprofit and public Campus Compact. service sectors.

They took first place in the The 2017 Community Scholars registration of out-of-state students. and their assignments were: Beverlee They were also selected as runnerHarbuck, Generation Citizen; Kate up in the competition for in-state Hawley, Norman city manager’s students. They competed in the office; Christina Hubbard, City of largest institution category and Norman legal department; Charlie received their trophies at the Marsh, City of Norman finance December state regents meeting. department; Christian Monk, In November, the fellows organized EarthRebirth; Izabelle Vazquez, a “Politics and Pizza” event titled Scissortail Community Development “Taking the Knee: Political Protests Corporation’s Aspiring Americans in Sports.” The event was moderated program; and Noah Wolff, Norman

by Mike Crespin and panelists city manager’s office. included professor Rodney Bates, We are grateful to the Schwartz Ph.D., Gateway to College Learning, Family Foundation for its support of OU football coach Eric Striker, a Community Scholars with a $10,000 former OU linebacker, and assistant grant to provide student stipends. professor Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, political science and affiliate faculty in Undergraduate Women’s and Gender Studies. During Research Fellows the spring semester, the fellows will host other Politics and Pizza events to The 2017-2018 Undergraduate engage OU’s student body in timely Research Fellows are Robert political discussions.

Bellafiore, Sierra Bennett, Maitlyn

Community Scholars During the fall semester, seven undergraduate students participated in the Community Scholars program, a public service learning opportunity.

The students worked 18 hours per week for a nonprofit or public agency in the Norman area where they developed professional experience

Brucks, Matthew Carey, Oscar Enriquez and Soraya Peron. These students conduct research tasks for faculty mentors. In the spring semester, students will write a paper and are encouraged to present their research during the OU Undergraduate Research Day event.

continued next page extensions | Winter 2018

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continued from previous page

Presentations Cindy Simon Rosenthal was a featured speaker at the 10th annual Oklahoma Service-Learning Conference, sponsored by the Oklahoma Regents for Higher Education’s Campus Compact. Her talk, “Building Curriculum for Service Learning Internships” focused on the center’s highly successful Capitol and Community Scholars courses.

At a grant workshop, Mike Crespin presented his paper, “Beyond the Roll Call: Multidimensional Negotiation During the Great Society,” which resulted from a grant received from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Utilizing material from the Congressional Archives and Political Collections, the research was part of the SSRC’s project on Negotiating Agreement in Congress.

The presentation featured, in part, a network analysis of key members of Congress and their staff during the deliberations around the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Assisting in the analysis were graduate students Heather Walser, Matthew Geras and Sarina Rhinehart.

Carl Albert graduate fellow Jessica Hayden co-authored “Congressional Communication in the Digital Age” with former Carl Albert graduate fellow Jocelyn Evans (Ph.D. 2002). In their Jessica Hayden book, Evans and Hayden offer a fresh, timely, and mixed-methods approach for understanding how the emergence of congressional websites has changed the representational relationship between constituents and members of Congress. Utilizing strong theoretical foundations, a broad historical perspective, elite interviews, and rich original datasets, they present evidence that these 28

extensions | Winter 2018

Photo courtesy of Carl Albert Center

Publications

virtual offices operate as a distinct representational space, and their use has resulted in changes in representational behavior.

Carl Albert Graduate Fellow Matthew Geras had an article accepted for publication in Political Research Quarterly. The forthcoming article, “The Implications of Apportionment on Quality Candidate Emergence and Electoral Competition,” examines the electoral implications of congressional apportionment. Elections data from 2002 to 2014 suggests that the limited number of political opportunities in states with few congressional districts will lead to more candidates with previous political experience.

Carl Albert Center associate director Mike Crespin and graduate fellows Hayden and Sarina Rhinehart had an article accepted for publication

by The Journal of Political Marketing.

The forthcoming article “Jumping on the Trump Train or Ditching the Donald: Campaign Rhetoric and the 2016 Congressional Election” explores the unusual challenge Republican congressional candidates faced in the 2016 general election: whether to market their campaigns as aligned with, or against, Donald Trump’s controversial candidacy.

In September, associate professor Chuck Finocchiaro and Susanne Schorpp, assistant professor at Georgia State University, co-authored a blog post, which was published by the London School of Economics’ U.S. Centre. The post is titled, “Wars can strengthen U.S. Presidents’ policy gains in Congress, but as casualties rise, they can become a liability” and is available at http://bit.ly/2guevOk.

In the News In October, National Public Radio correspondent Don Gonyea visited the center to conduct research in the archives’ Mike Synar collection.

Gonyea’s research was for his article “How the NRA Uses Its Political Clout: An Early Lesson in Oklahoma” which also referenced materials from the OU Political Communication Center.

Visiting Scholars In June, David Vail, University of Nebraska at Kearney, visited the center’s archives to conduct research for his project “Vulnerable Harvests: Agricultural Risk and the Great Plains Agricultural Council in the Eisenhower Era.” In August, Lindsay Drane, University of Houston, conducted research for her dissertation “The Undeserving Hungry: A SocioPolitical History of Food Stamps and Entitlement Liberalism, 1964-1996.”

Daniel Carpenter, the 2017 Julian J. Rothbaum lecturer, extended his campus visit to conduct research in the archives on Native American political activism.

Alumni Karen Kedrowski (Ph.D. 1992) was named executive director of Winthrop University’s new Center for Civic Learning. Kedrowski has been at Winthrop University since 1994, and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for four years immediately prior to joining the center.

Daniel Pae, former Carl Albert Center undergraduate research fellow and capitol scholar, announced his candidacy for Oklahoma’s house district 62 for the November 2018 election.

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THE CARL ALBERT GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM ~ A Commitment to the Study of Representative Government ~ The Carl Albert Graduate Fellowship is a highly-competitive and prestigious program at the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma.

Carl Albert Fellows work closely with Center faculty, in cooperation with the Department of Political Science, to pursue a rigorous and individualized program of study leading to a PhD. Fellows focus their program of study on fundamental issues in representative government in America including the study of institutions, processes, and public policy.

Faculty regularly interact with fellows in a physical space that facilitates collaboration and scholarly exchange. The laboratory model of graduate education means students will be involved with research from day one.

The robust fellowship package provides up to four years (including summers) of financial support as a teaching or research assistant and a final additional year with no work obligations to complete the dissertation.

The fellowship pays for full tuition and fees, funded research and conference travel, course work at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and dissertation research funds. The Center also assists fellows in finding the best possible placement to meet career goals.

Carl Albert Center Associate Director Mike Crespin (left) with Carl Albert doctoral fellows (left to right) Courtney Kellogg, Sarina Rhinehart, Henry Ashton, Jessica Hayden and Matthew Geras.

Carl Albert Fellows are introduced to nationally known political leaders and scholars through special guest lectures and seminars.

Distinguished visitors to the Center include Representative Tom Cole, Former Ambassador James R. Jones, as well as distinguished scholars Daniel Carpenter, Jennifer Hochschild, Frances Lee, Thomas Patterson, Jack Rakove, Steven S. Smith, and Keith Whittington.

Carl Albert Fellows access a rich and diverse selection of other resources at the University of Oklahoma: • Carl Albert Center Congressional and Political Collections: bit.ly/CAC-Archives • Public Opinion Learning Laboratory: ou.edu/oupoll • Political Commercial Archives: pcc.ou.edu • Center for Applied Social Research: casr.ou.edu

CARL ALBERT GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP Application Deadline: February 1 of each year.

Apply Online bit.ly/CAC-GradFellow extensions | Winter 2018

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The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101 Norman, Oklahoma 73019-4031 (405) 325-6372 http://www.ou.edu/carlalbertcenter

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PAID University of Oklahoma

Visiting Scholars Program The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center’s archives. Awards of $500-$1000 are normally granted as reimbursement for travel and lodging.

The Center’s holdings include the papers of many former members of Congress, such as Speaker Carl Albert, Robert S. Kerr, and Fred Harris of Oklahoma, Helen Gahagan Douglas and Jeffery Cohelan of California, and Neil Gallagher of New Jersey. Besides the history of Congress, congressional leadership, national and Oklahoma politics, and election campaigns, the collections also document government policy affecting agriculture, Native Americans, energy, foreign affairs, the environment, and the economy.

Topics that can be studied include the Great Depression, flood control, soil conservation and tribal affairs. At least one collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date from the 1920s to the 1990s, although there is one nineteenth-century collection.

Information about the center’s collections is available online at ou.edu/carlalbertcenter. Additional information can be obtained from the Center.

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in history, political science and other fields. Graduate students involved in research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Professional writers and researchers are also invited to apply. The Center evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a variety of topics is expected.

Interested applicants should complete the Visiting Scholars Grant Application available online at ou.edu/carlalbertcenter/congressional-collection/vsp. Applications are accepted at any time.

For more information, please contact: Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101, Norman, OK 73019. Telephone: (405) 325-6372. FAX: (405) 325-6419. E-mail: cacarchives@ou.edu

The University of Oklahoma is an Equal Opportunity Institution. www.ou.edu

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extensions | Winter 2018

Extensions is a copyrighted publication of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. It is distributed free of charge twice a year. All Rights Reserved.

Extensions and the Carl Albert Center symbol are trademarks of the Carl Albert Center. Copyright Carl Albert Center, The University of Oklahoma, 1985.

Statements contained herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Carl Albert Center or the regents of The University of Oklahoma.