Focus Area: Public Square

This post is by Tom Glaisyer, Kelly Born, and Jonathan Kartt. Tom Glaisyer is the Program Director of the Informed Participation Initiative at the Democracy Fund. Kelly Born is a Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, where she works on both Special Projects and the Madison Initiative, and Jonathan Kartt works in Programs & Evaluation for the Rita Allen Foundation.

How will voters find information in 2014?

For those who care about US democracy, this question is front and center in a world where both the structure of the news media and the channels through which voters get information are in flux. In the not too distant past, voters received most of their information about candidates and ballot measures through mass market dailies and TV or radio—places where the message was mediated by gatekeepers. The only opportunity to directly communicate with voters was through paid advertising or in-person contact. Nowadays, candidates have limitless options to directly reach voters – even television, when delivered via satellite, permits hyper targeting of political advertising messages.

 

But it’s not just campaigns that are exploiting these new digital opportunities—a host of (mostly new) organizations, non-profit and for-profit, are seeking not to win a vote, but to inform voters about their options.

It’s an exciting time for the field. Abroad, websites that match voters to policy positions held by parties, so-called voting advice applications, have seen significant adoption. In Germany, for example, Wahl-o-Mat was queried 13.2M times in 2013—not bad when you consider there are only 80M people in the country. In the US, we have encountered dozens of similar sites such as Vote411, ethePeople and Project VoteSmart.

 

The digitization of data permits an increasing amount of contextual information to be added to what was previously just a thumbnail sketch of a candidate or issue. For example, information on candidates or ballot initiatives can now be combined with “rules of the road” on where and when to vote, and what materials to bring. This digital “plumbing” is often under-appreciated—Google’s Civic Information API provide a way to lookup polling places in 2014 and listed the candidates on the ballot. It builds on data from the PEW Charitable Trust’s Voting Information Project and augments a recently developed iOS app.

Recognizing the possibilities in this emerging ecosystem of voter information, the Hewlett Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the Democracy Fund partnered to explore the dozens of voter information websites that have developed in the last few years. We examined a number of dimensions:

• Candidates vs Ballot Initiatives (or both): Many of the sites focus on candidates, while others like Healthy Democracy in Oregon and Washington State’s Living Voters Guide have (until recently) focused exclusively on ballot measures. Others like ethePeople, Project VoteSmart and PollVault, cover both.
• Geographic Scope: Many provide national coverage, whereas others, like ethePeople, partner with media and civics groups in specific states or localities. Maplight’s Voter’s Edge, cover national races, while also offering some down-ballot coverage in particular states (in this case, California).
• Audience: Some, like Ballotpedia, provide detailed information that might appeal more to policy wonks like ourselves, whereas Voter’s Edge or Who’s On The Ballot seek to serve those who prefer a less detailed view.
• Approach: Sites like Voter’s Edge provide “just the facts” (on a lot of dimensions, including candidate’s prior jobs, campaign funding sources, etc.). Others, like the newly launched Crowdpac,use campaign funding sources to predict candidates’ positions, in an attempt to address the challenge of comparing a 30-year incumbent’s record to that of a first-time challenger who has never held office. ISideWith uses matching algorithms – and has now paired more than 11 million users with their “ideal” candidates based on answers to basic philosophical and political questions (e.g., “what is your stance on taxation?”). Still others actually involve citizens in the deliberative process: Healthy Democracy in Oregon convenes a representative panel of dozens of citizens for a week to evaluate the pros and cons of a particular ballot initiative. The information is then shared with voters in the official voting guide. Research has shown how valued that information has been – a majority of Oregonians were aware of the tool, and roughly two thirds who read the CIR statements found them helpful when deciding how to vote. In Washington State the Living Voters Guide has utilized a deliberative platform to allow voters to share why they are in favor of or opposed to a particular initiative.
• Business Models: Half of what we found are for-profit operations like Crowdpac and Poll Vault. The other half (most of what we’ve discussed herein) are nonprofit. So we spoke with venture capitalists who had invested in several of the for-profit competitors to understand their reasons for doing so, and to ensure that we felt there was a good rationale for philanthropic investment in this space.
• Operating and Partnership Approaches: Some, like Project VoteSmart, rely on teams of dedicated interns, while others are striving towards more automated systems. We also looked at organizations’ partnerships – many like ethePeople are collaborating extensively as part of their model, others are closer to independent operators.
• Use: Finally, we looked at use. Not much is known about the end-users of these types of voting information services beyond broad demographic statistics. In terms of numbers, some platforms have received a fair amount of uptake, whereas others are so new that no usage data is even available yet – however, no site appears to have come close to Wahl-o-Mat’s success in Germany.

This wide variety of activity left us with lots of questions: whether and how to support this field, who to partner with, and on what kinds of projects? We have begun to explore these questions, and will discuss our early work on this topic in a follow-up post next week.

The practice of fact-checking is a core function of journalism in the 21^st century. As American Press Institute (API) executive director Tom Rosenstiel argues: “Nothing comes closer to journalism’s essential purpose than helping citizens know what is true and what is not. And in an age when information is in greater supply, it is more important, not less, that there are trusted and skilled sources to help citizens sort through misinformation.”

During the 2014 U.S. election cycle, fact-checking projects emerged in print, television, radio and online newsrooms around the country in greater numbers than ever before. Dr. Michelle Amazeen, a Rider University professor and API researcher, found that mentions of “fact-checking” in media increased more than 75 percent between 2011 and 2012 alone.

From this year’s primaries to the general election in 2016, API’s fact-checking project, launched earlier this year with support from The Democracy Fund, is working to improve and develop fact-checking best practices and trainings for newsrooms that want to provide deeper coverage for their audiences. In fact, API’s new emphasis on fact-checking excellence is already reaching beyond U.S. borders. Kirsten Smith, a journalist in Ottawa, Canada, contacted API in May with a request for assistance for her “small newsroom with limited resources” to prepare for the 2014 municipal elections and the 2015 national election. “Have you a tip sheet or primer for a small scale fact check program?” In fact, API has developed a big-picture tip sheet precisely for requests like this, and we will be developing in-depth training programs based on upcoming research.

API also has developed blog features, convened a meeting of its researchers and media, participated in the world’s first international fact-checking conference, and is discussing additional funding sources with organizations interested in promoting better fact-checking. An important initial function of the project is to compile, curate and examine the latest news from the fact-checking front. Features include:

• Q&A interviews with those who study and practice fact-checking;
• The latest from our scholars’ research projects and other studies in fact-checking;
• “How I Got That Fact,” a regular column by journalists across the country who share their fact-checking tips and process;
• A daily, curated collection of fact-checking stories from around the country; and
• More news and learning tools from the fact-checking universe.

A major part of the initiative brings together six experienced scholars from around the U.S. and the U.K. to work on projects designed to examine and improve the practice of fact-checking. Their topics include: the impact of fact-checking on political rhetoric; the effectiveness of rating systems like the Washington Post’s “Pinnochios;” readers’ changing perceptions of fact-checking; and a survey of journalists on the prevalence of fact-checking. The group joined API’s fact-checking project, announced in February, with plenty of experience in the study of information, misinformation, and how facts are processed. Here are the scholars, with a brief description of their work for API:

Michelle Amazeen, Rider University. Amazeen, a Temple University graduate who holds a Ph.D. in mass media and communication, will study the effectiveness of political fact-checking rating systems (such as the Washington Post’s “pinnochios”). On Twitter @commscholar.

Lucas Graves, University of Wisconsin. Graves, who holds a Ph.D. in journalism from Columbia University, has written about fact-checking topics for CJR and other publications. He will study the effects of fact-checking on journalistic practice and is part of the team working on the study of rating systems. On Twitter @gravesmatter.

 

Ashley Muddiman, University of Wyoming. Muddiman, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, is part of the team that will study the effectiveness of rating systems. She also is involved in the Engaging News Project. On Twitter @ashleymuddiman.

Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College. Nyhan, who holds a Ph.D. from Duke University, will assist on the project on the effects of fact-checking and a project which will examine how attitudes toward political fact-checking change over the course of a campaign. On Twitter @BrendanNyhan.

Jason Reifler, University of Exeter, UK. Reifler also holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. He will work with the teams studying the effects of fact-checking and changing attitudes during the course of a campaign. On Twitter @jasonreifler.

 

 

Emily Thorson, George Washington University. Thorson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She will examine how contextual information in news coverage can minimize misperceptions, and will work with the team studying the effectiveness of ratings systems. On Twitter @emilythorson.

The American Press Institute will combine the researchers’ work with the work of other scholars and API’s own research to identify what kinds of fact-checking are most effective at stopping misleading rhetoric and are most informative to citizens. In the second year of the program, API will conduct workshops and meetings and develop other resources aimed at supporting news organizations interested in fact-checking on the eve of the 2016 election cycle.

Have questions? Topics you’d like to see tackled? A good fact-checked story of your own? Contact me at jane.elizabeth (at) pressinstitute.org, 571-366-1116, @JaneEliz.

It has been an exciting debut year for the Engaging News Project. The aim of the project is to research democratically-beneficial and commercially-viable tools and strategies for engaging online news audiences. Below, we detail four take-aways from our work. Use a “Respect” Button in Comment Sections. “Like” is a common button on news websites. You can “like” news organizations, articles, and others’ thoughts in comment sections. The use of the word “like,” however, may exacerbate partisan reactions to news and comments. The word asks people to think in terms of agreeing or disagreeing, approving or disapproving. But not all words inspire the same reaction. Indeed, several organizations have incorporated other buttons onto their sites. The Tampa Bay Times has “Important,” Civic Commons “Informative,” and Huffington Post “Bored,” to name but a few. We tested a new word: “Respect.” Perhaps asking people to “Respect” others’ comments will lead to different behaviors in a comment section compared to “Like,” or another frequently used word, “Recommend.” The results were encouraging. From a democratic angle, “Respect” led people to click on more comments expressing different political viewpoints. From a business angle, “Respect” resulted in more clicks overall, particularly for some topics. We encourage news organizations to consider using this new button. Use Fact-Based Interactive Slider Quizzes. Online polls are regular features on news sites. They solicit site visitors’ opinions on everything from proposed legislation to how a sports team will fare during an upcoming season. Truth be told, however, the poll results are of limited value. They offer no insight on the sentiments of a broader public. They should not be used to form an opinion or to inform policy. The main purpose of these features is to keep people on a news page longer. We hoped that we could find a way to increase the democratic value of these interactive tools. Instead of polls that ask people to report their opinions, we tested quizzes that ask people about a fact and then provide reliable information. For example, a question could be posed about what percentage of the federal budget is spent on Social Security. Quiz questions also could ask people to predict public opinion about a topic, giving results based on reliably-gathered public opinion data. We tested two types of polls: a multiple-choice poll and a slider poll. Consider the Democracy Fund’s work with the “Oregon Citizens Initiative Review (CIR).” As Peter Levine explained in his earlier blog post, the project involves sending Oregonians pamphlets created by a representative group of 24 citizens that explain ballot measures. Here are examples of the two types of polls:

We first conducted a laboratory test on polls like these. We learned that people spend more time with slider polls and that these interactive tools improve learning compared to just telling people a fact (e.g. “nearly half of Oregon voters were aware of the CIR’s explanations.”). Next, we partnered with a news organization that let us include polls on their site. The code randomized whether people saw a multiple-choice or slider poll. Results showed that including more than one poll, and at least one slider poll, can increase the amount of time people spend on a webpage. Get Involved in the Comment Section. In visiting with news staff across the country as part of this project, we were struck by the tremendous variability in comment section practices. Some news organizations actively cultivate a vibrant online community. Others essentially ignore the section, writing it off as a wasteland that is included on a site because having people argue, the theory goes, could increase their time on site. Calls by political leaders from President Obama to Texas Governor Perry to improve the civility of public discourse inspired us to examine strategies for combatting incivility in comment sections. We worked with a local television station to randomize what took place following 70 different political posts to their active Facebook page. For some posts, the station’s popular political reporter interacted with commenters. For other posts, the station interacted with commenters. And for yet other posts, no one interacted with commenters. Results showed that having a political reporter interact with commenters can improve civility in the comment section. Use Caution in Labeling Hyperlinks. Our final project analyzed how hyperlinks are labeled on news sites. Right now, they are commonly labeled as “Top Stories” or as “Most Popular Stories.” We wondered whether other phrases, developed based on research in psychology, communication, and political science, could affect people’s on-site behavior. For example, we analyzed whether including the phrase “Follow the issues that worry you.” would influence people’s on-site behavior and attitudes about politics. We conducted a lab experiment where we compared how people behaved on a news site that was identical in all ways except one: a single phrase included on the site. Results were decidedly mixed. All of the six different phrases that we evaluated had effects, but none of them had uniformly positive business and democratic outcomes. For example, the phrase “Follow the issues that worry you” resulted in some respondents displaying less polarized political views, but it had no discernible business effect. As a result of our study, we can’t recommend any of the phrases that we tested. But we can report with confidence that news organization should tread cautiously in adding new phrases to their sites. A single phrase can affect people’s attitudes and behaviors. For the Engaging News Project these results are the beginning of the project’s work to help newsrooms. Many new tools and strategies remain to be discovered and evaluated and we look forward to continuing our work in the coming years. If you’re interested in getting involved, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, Sign up for our newsletter, and Email us with any suggestions you might have!

(This is the second in a series of blog posts by CIRCLE, which evaluated several initiatives funded by the Democracy Fund to inform and engage voters during the 2012 election. These posts discuss issues of general interest that emerged from specific evaluations. Join CIRCLE for an ongoing discussion of the posts using the hashtag #ChangeTheDialogue, as well as a live chat on Tuesday, June 25th at 2pm ET/1pm CT/11am PT.) Two Democracy Fund grantees—the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Columbia Journalism Review—worked to support reporters and editors in order to improve their election coverage and better inform the public on key issues of national concern. We evaluated these initiatives by interviewing some of the potentially affected journalists, 97 in all. One theme that emerged very clearly was the challenging situation that confronts the news industry. This context has been well documented in other research. For example, according to a study of the changing news environment in Baltimore, conducted by the Pew Research Center, the number of news outlets in the city has proliferated to 53 “radio talk shows, . . . blogs, specialized new outlets, new media sites, TV stations, radio news programs, newspapers and their various legacy media websites.” But the number of reporters has fallen. That means there is more written and spoken about the news than ever, but it is highly repetitive. A search of six major news topics found that 83 percent of the articles and blog posts repeated the same material—sometimes with commentary—and more than half the original text came from paid print media such as the Baltimore Sun. In turn, Baltimore’s remaining professional journalists are so overstretched that they cannot provide what is called “enterprise reporting” (digging to find new information not already in the public domain). The city government and other official institutions now have more, rather than less, control over the news. The report notes, “As news is posted faster, often with little enterprise reporting added, the official version of events is becoming more important. We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.” Our interviews found ample evidence of similar conditions. One reporter said, “the political reporting in our state has shrunk to the point where a lot of the major reporters are ones that have been doing it for decades and, quite frankly, their reporting (and lack of digging) reflects how tired they are.” On the whole, our interviewees were very pleased to be provided with support in the form of CPI’s in-depth reporting and the Columbia Journalism Review’s coverage of their work. For example:

• “Without that kind of work I don’t know how one could sort themselves through what’s happened, unless they’ve been following for the past 5 years.”

• “Without Open Secrets and CPI I don’t know how a journalist who is new could figure this stuff out.”

They noted various ways in which these interventions had affected them. They mentioned learning about good practices that are used in other newspapers, getting ideas for stories, and encouraging high quality work. Commenting on the CJR’s effort, one reporter said, “It sort of serves as a watchdog to remind people to do a good job, to do a thorough job, to look for fresh angles, to dig beneath the surface, and, ah, hopefully those are things that I’m doing already.” Local coverage emerged as an area that needs special attention and support. As a reporter told us, “One of the faults with journalism coverage and journalism criticism, in general, is that it tends to focus on the big national players and the big national issues. And as we’ve seen a number of major publications pull back on local coverage …, it’s become all the more important that we have some sort of press criticism function taking care of local media and engaging with local media. And I think that a lot of reporters working locally and regionally would benefit from that sort of attention and that sort of engagement as well.” There were, however, a few concerns that also related to the limited capacity and fragile financial condition of the news industry. CPI’s model is to provide in-depth reporting that news sources can use in writing their own articles and broadcasts, and a few respondents were worried that CPI might become a competitor for readers. The Columbia Journalism Review wrote appreciative as well as critical articles about political news coverage, but a few respondents felt that these articles did not demonstrate adequate sensitivity to the limited capacity of local newsrooms. Although most interviewees were pleased with the CJR’s coverage, the relatively few respondents who felt it was unfair were likely to think that the CJR’s correspondent had overlooked their limited capacity to accomplish what was being suggested. CIRCLE’s interviews suggest the following conclusions:

• Because of staffing cuts and turnover in the profession, the news media struggles to cover politics. They are aware of their difficult situation and generally grateful for assistance.

• Providing high-quality information and constructive criticism does change reporters’ behavior.

• Professionals in the news media are understandably somewhat sensitive about being given advice unless the person offering it recognizes the practical limitations they face.They are also concerned about being manipulated by ostensibly nonpartisan organizations that they fear may have partisan objectives. (See our previous blog post on the problem of distrust.)

• Interventions designed to support the news media should not inadvertently compete with the news media by taking away readers or viewers.

The previous entries in the series can be accessed below: 1 – Educating Voters in a time of Political Polarization

During the 2012 election, FlackCheck.org flagged two different kinds of recurrent deceptions to put candidates on notice and increase public understanding of the substance of presidential campaigns. The first featured fabulations such as ‘Romney opposed abortion even in cases of rape and incest’ and “Obama ‘gutted’ the work requirement in welfare reform”— that persisted in the face of debunking by the major fact checkers. The second drew on campaign rhetoric to illustrate “patterns” – including false logic and misleading uses of language— that campaigns use to invite false inferences or propel audiences toward unjustified conclusions.

Two statements made by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich exemplify what we mean by a pattern of deception. In late 2011, Gingrich claimed that “I balanced the budget for four straight years…” and last summer Clinton said, “I gave you four surplus budgets for the first time in more than 70 years…”

Instead of crying “false” (because their level of self-congratulation is unwarranted) or “partially true” (because each did play a role in balancing budgets), the Detecting Patterns of Deception page identifies the misleading move that Clinton and Gingrich share as “Overestimating an Individual’s Power.” Each is claiming full credit for balanced budgets when the plaudits should be shared with many others, ranging from the Congressmen who supported the deficit reduction packages of two administrations to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and those who created the tech boom of the 1990s. Efforts to reject misleading moves and deception have been around for a long time. Since Aristotle defined thirteen fallacies, theorists have fashioned primers to protect audiences from seductive errors in reasoning and machinations that cloud judgment. Flackcheck’s Detecting Patterns of Deception page has followed this tradition, defining and illustrating 28 deceptive patterns clustered into six categories: Overestimating Power, Misleading Language, Misleading Audio-Visual Cues, Not Telling The Whole Story, False Logic, and Hypocritical Attack. With this work, we are targeting those too young to have developed the strong partisan reflexes that produce confirmation bias. We expect that regular exposure to the Detecting Patterns of Deception page will teach even those who rationalize their own side’s excesses to spot the sorts of recurrent moves that would have made Machiavelli proud. In the ‘more difficult but doable’ category of goals, we expect that our explanations will increase our audience’s understanding of how these inference-forging moves mislead. A tougher objective aspires, over time, to translate recognition and understanding into disapproval. In the “maybe under some circumstances” box, we hope (but with longer odds) that among at least some of our audience, our process of labeling, defining, explaining, and illustrating will lead them to reject the deceptive pattern regardless of the ideology of the candidate or cause employing it. Put more technically, the Detecting Patterns of Deception pilot project assumes that IF: a) We craft clear definitions that schematize the relationships among our Patterns of Deception, b) Identify cogent exemplars from both left and right to populate those schemas, and c) Over time familiarize those who have not yet formed strong partisan attachments (i.e., high school and first year college students) with the categories embodied in the labels, the explanations of why each is problematic, and illustrations of the misleading moves from both left and right, THEN WE WILL: d) Enhance audience political acuity by increasing recognition, understanding of the misleading nature, disapproval and rejection of misleading moves in ongoing campaigns and issue debates regardless of their source and do so without activating cynicism. To see how well the categories illumine the gun control debate take a look at the rhetoric we’ve labeled “out of context”. “overgeneralization,” “ad hominem,” “slippery slope”, “red herring”, “false categorical” and “guilt by association.”