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Category: Project

Description: The response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has been notably partisan. However, recent evidence suggests that people have also been directing more attention to local newspapers during this period. Given that local newspapers promote pro-social civic behavior, such as turning out to vote, it is possible that this increase in attention is helping communities to adopt necessary social distancing behavior. To test this possibility, I combine data from Google on mobility in thousands of American counties with counts of the number of newspapers available in each county, as well as county-level pandemic and demographic features, to model changes in staying at home and traveling for retail and recreation purposes. I find that even though behavior change is correlated with local newspaper availability, the association disappears when controlling for additional pandemic and demographic features. The lack of an effect persists even when applying covariate balancing propensity score weighting. The lack of a causal effect of local news availability on social distancing uptake suggests that local news is limited in its ability to undo the politicization of national issues.