This article examines the information sharing behavior of U.S. politicians and the mass public by mapping the ideological sharing space of political news on social media. As data, we use the near-universal currency of online information exchange: web links. We introduce a methodological approach and software to unify the measurement of ideology across social media platforms by using sharing data to jointly estimate the ideology of news media organizations, politicians, and the mass public. Empirically, we show that (1) politicians who share ideologically polarized content share, by far, the most political news and commentary and (2) that the less competitive elections are, the more likely politicians are to share polarized information. These results demonstrate that news and commentary shared by politicians come from a highly unrepresentative set of ideologically extreme legislators and that decreases in election pressures (e.g., by gerrymandering) may encourage polarized sharing behavior.

This study explores vulnerability narratives used in relation to older adults and others during the COVID-19 pandemic. A mixed-method content analysis was conducted of 391 articles published in two major newspapers in Canada and the USA during the first wave of the pandemic. The findings indicated that during the early months of the pandemic, limited attention was directed towards its impact on older adults or other ‘vulnerable’ subpopulations in both countries. Where evident, intrinsic (individual-level) risk factors were most consistently used to frame the vulnerability of older adults. In contrast, vulnerability was more likely to be framed as structural with regard to other subpopulations (e.g., ethno-racial minorities). These narratives also differed somewhat in Canadian and US newspapers. The framing of older adults as intrinsically vulnerable reflects ageist stereotypes and promotes downstream policy interventions. Greater attention is needed to the role of structural factors in influencing pandemic-related outcomes among older adults.

Extensive research in Western societies has demonstrated that media reports of protests have succumbed to selection and description biases, but such tendencies have not yet been tested in the Chinese context. This article investigates the Chinese government and news media's selection and description bias in domestic protest events reporting. Using a large protest event data set from Weibo (CASM-China), we found that government accounts on Weibo covered only 0.4 per cent of protests while news media accounts covered 6.3 per cent of them. In selecting events for coverage, the news media accounts tacitly struck a balance between newsworthiness and political sensitivity; this led them to gravitate towards protests by underprivileged social groups and shy away from protests targeting the government. Government accounts on Weibo, on the other hand, eschewed reporting on violent protests and those organized by the urban middle class and veterans. In reporting selected protest events, both government and news media accounts tended to depoliticize protest events and to frame them in a more positive tone. This description bias was more pronounced for the government than the news media accounts. The government coverage of protest events also had a more thematic (as opposed to episodic) orientation than the news media.

Previous studies have found negative ageing narratives in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, few have focused on compassionate ageism and how the news responded to the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated (a) media themes of negative and compassionate ageism and (b) their relationships with COVID-19 parameters and the public health response. The sample included 1,197 articles relevant to COVID-19 and older people in Hong Kong published between January and December 2020. We used thematic analysis to identify themes from the news articles and structural equation modelling to explore these themes' relationship with the number of older people infected, effective reproduction number, number of COVID-19 deaths and public health response parallel in time. Pandemic-related variables were lagged for a day – the time needed to be reflected in the news. Two negative ageism themes portrayed older people as vulnerable to COVID-19 but counterproductive in combating the pandemic. Two compassionate ageism themes depicted older people as a homogenous group of passive assistance recipients. The theme blaming older people was associated with the number of confirmed infections (β = 0.418, p = 0.002) but vulnerability of older people was not associated with pandemic-related variables. The theme helping older people was negatively associated with the percentage of older people in confirmed infections (β = −0.155, p = 0.019). The theme resources available was negatively associated with confirmed infections (β = −0.342, p < 0.001) but positively associated with the Containment and Health Index (β = 0.217, p = 0.005). Findings suggested that negative and compassionate ageism were translated into narratives about older people in the media as the pandemic evolved but did not address the actual risk they faced. Media professionals should be aware of the potential negative and compassionate ageism prompted by the news agenda and promote adequate health behaviours and responses.

Why is misleading partisan content believed and shared? An influential account posits that political partisanship pervasively biases reasoning, such that engaging in analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning and, in turn, the acceptance of hyperpartisan content. Alternatively, it may be that susceptibility to hyperpartisan content is explained by a lack of reasoning. Across two studies using different participant pools (total N = 1,973 Americans), we had participants assess true, false, and hyperpartisan news headlines taken from social media. We found no evidence that analytic thinking was associated with judging politically consistent hyperpartisan or false headlines to be accurate and unbiased. Instead, analytic thinking was, in most cases, associated with an increased tendency to distinguish true headlines from both false and hyperpartisan headlines (and was never associated with decreased discernment). These results suggest that reasoning typically helps people differentiate between low and high quality political news, rather than facilitate belief in misleading content. Because social media play an important role in the dissemination of misinformation, we also investigated willingness to share headlines on social media. We found a similar pattern whereby analytic thinking was not generally associated with increased willingness to share hyperpartisan or false headlines. Together, these results suggest a positive role for reasoning in resisting misinformation.

Risk is an innate and integral part of everyday life and is present in simple, everyday occupations and complex actions. Age-related stereotypes can mean older people have little opportunity to engage in activities that present some degree of risk. The present study explores the discourse around risk and older people in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated news media as a reflection of the dominant public discourse around older people's behaviour to identify how risk is represented in relation to occupational engagement. Texts relating to older people and COVID-19 were sourced from the West Australian newspaper for a period of two months. Seventy texts were subject to Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify subject positions, location of risk and discursive features. Findings indicate that older people were segregated from the rest of society, with their behaviours framed in mostly negative ways. We identified three areas of discourse: vulnerable, and in need of protection; recalcitrant, and in need of management; and resilient, deserving of respect. While we recognise competing representations, implicit within the dominant discourse was the premise that older people were not capable of mediating risks and required ‘management’. These findings highlight the role of surveillance in restricting occupational engagement for older people and carry implications for older people, the public and therapists.

Xenophobic narratives that describe Latinx immigrants as culturally deficient, threatening, and undeserving lawbreakers have received extensive scrutiny from the public and academics alike. However, few scholars have examined the positive narratives that surround this group, an especially important line of inquiry given the nature and prevalence of colorblind racial ideology today. In this paper, we consider how (seemingly) positive elite news media discourse contributes to the racialization of Latinx immigrants. We analyzed 1383 frames derived from newspaper articles appearing on the front page of The New York Times between 2001 and 2019. We found that even supportive articles contribute to the racialization of this group by subtly reinforcing boundaries between “us” and “them,” especially when compared to positive articles about non-Latinx immigrants. Specifically, positive newspaper articles portrayed Latinx immigrants as economically exploitable, as vulnerable but blameworthy, and as mostly illegal. We also found that positive newspaper articles portrayed both Latinx and non-Latinx immigrants as devoted to their families and traditional gender roles. However, we argue that this depiction reinforces a hierarchy based on White notions of deservingness. Our analysis shows the flexibility of colorblind discourse to prop up existing racial hierarchies in U.S. society and to “Other” racial and ethnic minorities.