In a recent study published in the American Journal of Political Science, researchers investigated whether online interventions could enhance state and local news consumption among Pennsylvanians in today’s highly polarized and national-focused media landscape. But despite offering free online newspaper subscriptions to more than 2,000 individuals, only 44 people in total signed up.
Local newspapers have played a crucial role in informing residents about regional politics, providing in-depth coverage essential for making informed decisions at the polls. However, over recent decades, there has been a significant shift in how people access news, with a marked preference for national over local sources, facilitated by the rise of cable television and online media. This shift impacted the economic viability of local newspapers, leading to closures and a reduction in focused local political content.
In their new study, University of Pennsylvania professor Daniel J. Hopkins and independent researcher Tori Gorton sought to explore whether targeted online interventions could counteract these trends by encouraging residents of Pennsylvania to engage more with state and local news. Pennsylvania, with its diverse political landscape and status as a swing state, provided a robust setting for such an investigation.
The researchers worked with an online survey company, Civiqs, to identify a large group of Pennsylvania residents not currently subscribed to either of the state’s largest newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The study focused on participants living in the geographic areas served by these newspapers, ensuring the audience would benefit from relevant state and local news coverage.
After collecting baseline data via a pre-experimental survey, the researchers randomly assigned 2,529 of the 5,059 participants to receive the treatment and the remaining 2,530 to the control group.
The participants in the treatment group were encouraged to subscribe to a 13-week free online edition of their relevant local newspaper. The researchers used a two-pronged approach to reach them: direct mail (postcards) and targeted Facebook ads. Each participant in the treatment group received either or both of these advertisements, providing a clear explanation of the offer and instructions on how to subscribe.
However, the uptake was notably low, with only 44 individuals out of the thousands offered actually subscribing to the newspapers — a mere 1.7% application rate. Further analysis showed a strong partisan divide in the likelihood of subscribing to local newspapers. Democratic respondents were more likely to engage with local news offerings than their Republican counterparts.
Some Republicans explicitly cited partisan bias as a reason for avoiding such subscriptions. This partisan divide mirrors national trends, where distrust of the media is often higher among Republicans than among Democrats. The findings suggest that contemporary local newspapers face a “demand-side dilemma,” where highly engaged citizens may be opting out of regional journalism in favor of national news more aligned with their political beliefs.
The unexpectedly low response led to the second phase of the experiment, where the researchers shifted strategies to direct content promotion. In this phase, the researchers created sponsored posts on Facebook that promoted specific articles from the two state newspapers. These articles covered prominent state-level issues like COVID-19 policies, the governor’s political activities, and fiscal challenges.
Each Monday over several weeks, the team identified and promoted a new article, aiming to boost engagement with regional issues. This intervention resulted in thousands of targeted Facebook impressions, allowing researchers to see whether directly delivering news content through social media feeds would effectively increase engagement.
Despite generating tens of thousands of impressions, this strategy did not significantly improve participants’ political knowledge or engagement. The researchers found those exposed to promoted local news stories on Facebook did not demonstrate any significant increases in local political knowledge compared to the control group.
Similarly, the interventions did not significantly affect measures of civic engagement, such as participation in local elections or activities, or attitudes toward local governance. The surveys administered before and after the interventions showed that participants’ levels of engagement and their attitudes remained largely unchanged
The findings highlight a challenging landscape for boosting local political knowledge and engagement through traditional and digital media interventions. The minimal impacts on civic metrics suggest that simply providing access to local news content, even when tailored and targeted via modern online platforms, is not enough to overcome deeper disengagement or distrust.
“The core findings here are of people unmoved — uninterested in subscribing, and with knowledge and attitudes that were largely unresponsive to either a free subscription offer or state/local news stories promoted on Facebook,” Hopkins and Gorton wrote in their study.
But why were the participants so unmoved? The researchers noted that their sample showed heightened political engagement, with 92% having voted in the 2018 midterm elections, a rate significantly higher than the 51% turnout among all voting-eligible adults in Pennsylvania for that election.
“On their own, such high levels of political interest might be expected to increase respondents’ interest in local newspapers,” the researchers said. “In fact, the [participants] are heavy consumers of other political media with a national focus… More than 19% watch Tucker Carlson and Hannity while 12% read the New York Times. But among this population, partisanship seems to have swamped the effects of political interest when it comes to subscribing to a local paper.”
A similar study conducted by Andrew Trexler at Duke University found strikingly similar results. About 500 registered voters in North Carolina were offered a two-month free digital subscription to the Raleigh News & Observer. But uptake was exceptionally low, with only 3.8% of those who received the offer activating their free subscription.
“Overall, this study paints a bleak picture for the future of local news,” Trexler concluded. “Despite the significant economic challenges that local newspapers [face], somehow solving all of those problems would still leave untouched the greater difficulty of convincing the mass public to actually read what they produce.”
The study, “Unsubscribed and undemanding: Partisanship and the minimal effects of a field experiment encouraging local news consumption,” was published March 19, 2024.