Why millions of Americans avoid the news and what it means for the election
Nieman Lab: “We are seeing a huge divide between people who are interested in news and those who are not, and I suspect that this divide is intensifying…Benjamin Toff is one of the leading experts on the rise of news avoidance and one of the authors of this recent book on this issue, based on survey data and interviews with people in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He was also the leader of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s own Trust in News Project and is now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.
As Election Day approaches in the U.S., I spoke to Toff about why news avoidance may be shaping this year’s election, how candidates are trying to reach these elusive audiences, and what news organizations are doing to reach those who don’t follow the news in its current form. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Benjamin Toff: According to this year’s Digital News Report, up to 43% say they avoid the news in some form. It doesn’t mean that 43% of the country is not consuming any news at all. But it’s a sign of a clear decline in interest in news.
There is a smaller group of people that we call consistent news avoiders. They consume news less often than once a month or never, and this group is around 8% of the U.S. public, which is still millions of people…
Compulsory Voting’s American History
137 Harv. L. Rev. 1138 – “Voter turnout was higher in the 2020 U.S. presidential election than it had been in 120 years. Nearly sixty-seven percent of citizens over eighteen voted that November, exceeding rates that hovered around sixty percent in the twenty-first century and never broke sixty percent from 1972 to 2000. Some pundits have read this recent record as a triumph.
But it can also be seen as a travesty: even with the best turnout since 1900, nearly eighty million eligible voters stayed home. Slim turnout has long prompted reform efforts. Yet the United States has always shied from one direct solution: requiring everyone to vote. “Compulsory voting” — where legislatures require attendance at the polls, often enforced by fines or penalties — exists in around two dozen countries, but nowhere in America, relegating the idea to “goo-goo reformers” and law review notes.
Recently, however, compulsory voting has entered mainstream debate. President Obama floated the idea in 2015 to fight money in politics and diversify the electorate. A 2018 New York Times article piqued interest in Australia’s mandatory voting system.
And in 2022, E.J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport published a popular book arguing that “universal civic duty voting” will end voter suppression, improve representation, and boost belief in government. Their work has inspired legislators in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington to introduce compulsory voting bills.
Compulsory voting may not yet be on the horizon. But the recent wave of advocacy has given the issue a greater spotlight than it has had in a century. Amid this momentum, we have much to learn from exploring compulsory voting’s overlooked American history. From the colonies to the Progressive Era to the twenty-first century, Americans have seriously considered making voting a duty of citizenship. That history helps illuminate the depth of democratic creativity in our Progressive past. And, given our crises of democracy today, that past should push us to keep reviving this powerful policy today.”
Your Vote Is Safe
TIME: “As Nov. 5 approaches, former president Donald Trump has left little room for doubt about his intentions. He will almost certainly declare victory on election night, as the votes are still being counted. He may turn out to be right. But if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, Trump will reject the result as corrupt and launch a scorched-earth campaign to overturn it. This plot is so well telegraphed that it barely counts as a prediction.
Trump has stated repeatedly that he cannot lose unless there is “massive fraud”—and, separately, that the election is “rigged,” with a “bad voting system.” As he told the Fraternal Order of Police on Sept. 6: “We win without voter fraud, we win so easily.” Voters, by that reckoning, can make no other legitimate choice. That upside-down view of elections may still have the power to shock, but after Trump’s response to defeat four years ago it cannot be called surprising.
Perhaps one candidate will win so conclusively that no reasonable person can doubt it. But pollsters continue to assess, as they have for months, that the presidential contest is too close to call, and a narrow win in the current environment is cause for concern.
Public opinion surveys show that many Americans are not sure whether to trust the machinery of elections, and many flatly say that they do not. Barely half of those surveyed in a September NORC poll said they were confident of an accurate vote count. That is nothing like a normal number, historically.
We are embarking on a presidential election in which tens of millions of Americans disbelieve the results in advance. The 2020 election, relatedly, was the only one in American history which the loser refused persistently to concede. The partisan split—close to 80% of Democrats, but just 30% of Republicans, have faith in the vote count—reflects the cumulative damage of countless lies.
As the American experiment nears its semiquincentennial, is it capable of holding a secure election with a trusted process and a widely accepted result? If the outcome is not to Trump’s liking, can democracy defend itself against another attempt to overthrow a President-elect?..”
Your Guide to Voting in the 2024 Election
- Everything You Need to Know About Voting in the 2024 Election
- How to Survive Election Season Without Losing Your Mind
- Why Hand Counting Ballots Could Create an Election Disaster
- How to Protect Yourself from AI Election Misinformation
- How to Read Political Polls Like a Pro
Foreign Malign Election Meddling Persists but Struggles to Gain Traction
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies(FDD): “In September 2024, FDD published a report documenting Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence operations targeting the 2024 U.S. elections. This follow-up report details the ongoing efforts of U.S. adversaries who seek to undermine voters’ confidence in the electoral process in the weeks leading up to the November election.
To raise public awareness and aid efforts by the U.S. government and research community to track these campaigns, this report documents new content from several significant, previously exposed influence operations. It also shows that many of these operations appear to have failed to gain significant traction.The new content described in this report follows a well-established pattern:
Russia continues to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris heavily and promote former President Donald Trump. Iran criticizes both candidates but generally favors Harris while criticizing Trump. China criticizes both candidates, often using antisemitic tropes to allege that Israel controls both candidates. Both government-affiliated and independent researchers have documented much of the infrastructure of Russian, Iranian, and Chinese campaigns, including domains and social media accounts.
To date, these researchers have largely exposed foreign malign influence operations before their narratives and posts went viral. Nevertheless, the U.S. government and social media platforms should act more quickly to dismantle the known infrastructure associated with influence operations, including domains and social media accounts.
Americans must avoid either overestimating or underestimating the severity of the threat of foreign influence to U.S. elections. Accordingly, FDD continues to publicize ongoing influence operations while carefully documenting their limited reach.
To facilitate balanced appraisals, the U.S. government should similarly provide metrics or estimations of reach and impact whenever it shares information with the public about malign influence operations. Americans must remain vigilant without becoming fearful…”
