Abstract:
As Americans increasingly turn to social media for news, they face political information environments that are overwhelmingly crowded, emotional, and lack epistemic hierarchies of informational sources. This has wide reaching consequences for politics when it comes to issues like misinformation and polarization, but it is also changing public perceptions of what news media are and challenging traditional understanding of the role of news media in democracies. Using panel survey data from 2020 and 2024, we examine two seemingly contradictory phenomenon: how information abundance can lead to news avoidance and how strong emotional reactions to politics can lead to disengagement. Together, these studies highlight how social media may be shaping both how Americans define news and how they engage with it in the contemporary political information environment.

Bio:
Ariel Hasell is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. Broadly, her research examines how the contemporary media environment influences exposure to information about science and politics, the effects of that exposure on knowledge and beliefs, as well as public engagement with science and politics in society.

Meeting ID: 929 6502 5837
Passcode: 770619