Here's something I post from time to time. My answer to a reader who asked me: what could journalists do NOW to break with some of their more corrosive habits.

The full write up is here: Was It Something The Democrats Said? A Response to Third Way’s Political Language Memo open.substack.com/pub/dcinboxi...

The only thing I can say about this paragraph is read it. Sit with it. Read it again. @michaelharriot.bsky.social

I'm closely interviewed for this Nieman Lab report that discusses how rural areas will be affected by loss of funding for local NPR reporting. We must not underestimate the importance of equal access to information - we're about to witness a seismic ideological shift in American sense of "place."

We just learned we are the most visited nonprofit news site in the U.S.

How effective are user corrections on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve effectiveness? In piece led by @sachaltay.bsky.social we find corrections have small effects, adding a fact-check unlikely to make them more effective misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-... 1/6

[deep sigh] I legitimately wonder where the senior managers pushing LLM tools get the notion that they will save time. Personal experience says it's the equivalent of double checking the work of a particularly incompetent work-study student. Such is management disconnect from the work being done.

Copy of my book just arrived in the mail today! Feels unreal. You can preorder it here: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Missouri AG: Any AI That Doesn’t Praise Donald Trump Might Be “Consumer Fraud” (No, Really) Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey just sent threatening letters to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, claiming their AI chatbots violated Missouri's consumer protection laws. The crime? When asked…

When NPR left Twitter, traffic dropped by only a single percentage point. niemanreports.org/npr-twitter-...

Although “people in China are acutely conscious of the limits of permissible speech,” Lavender Au writes, Chinese students living in the United States never expected to be contending with similar worries:

Musk's DOGE efforts to undermine foreign aid will lead to the deaths of tens of millions unless reversed. wapo.st/4684PQL

Note that Trump's cuts to university research are his least supported policy, @mayasen.bsky.social. Suggests a potentially broad coalition in support of university research, if universities can effectively make this argument.

Enjoy our report from wave 2 of our three wave election panel study. This report highlights the importance of information diets and the country’s preferences in this current moment. Stay tuned for wave 3 at the end of summer!

🚨 CCCR has a new survey report out today! 🚨 "100 Days Under Trump: Public Reactions to Attacks on American Governance & Institutions" The report draws on our Apr/May YouGov panel survey of US adults, following our Oct 2024 survey w/ recontacts + a sample refresh. 1/ cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

The US government is pumping right-wing conspiracy theories into other countries. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Destroying the agency that brought us the internet, the SuperCollider and modern telescopes. Heading into the dark ages here

Two seriously news organizations, probably more that I haven’t seen, referring to Afrikaners as refugees feels like confirmation we are living in the worst doublespeak simulation

There's a bill in Florida that would ban public colleges and universities from doing polling: www.insightsassociation.org/Portals/INSI... Some of the only non-partisan public polling in FL these days comes from FAU and UNF, etc. If you're in FL, please contact your state rep / senator to oppose

So grateful to have been part of this conversation at UW-Madison yesterday. Folks, we gotta talk about the ways this administration’s policies and practices are impacting us. We gotta make plans to proactively care for each other. And we gotta hold our leaders accountable to doing the same!

🧵 summarizing last night's panel. As @prowag.bsky.social said, "Proud of this terrific conversation between experts and students about how we understand and navigate this moment together."

Proud of this terrific conversation between experts and students about how we understand and navigate this moment together.

Our teach-in was the lead story on the Madison local evening news last night. Our segment is previewed at the start, then begins at 1:00. www.channel3000.com/video/news-3...

Last night, CCCR hosted a well-attended teach-in panel for UW-Madison students about how the new presidential administration's attacks on university funding, independence, and people are impacting students. 1/

There's a lot of work to do. We're hiring another Legal Fellow to start ASAP. Please send the best people our way. @knightcolumbia.org knightcolumbia.org/page/legal-f...

Academic research centers that study the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation are still under attack, paulthedogman.bsky.social warns. He explains why and how their rights should be defended. www.justsecurity.org/109030/acade...

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world. Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

"elite rhetoric about Trump’s prosecution has strikingly limited effects on public opinion, as pretreatment favorability toward Trump powerfully shapes whether or not citizens are receptive to rhetoric about legal accountability" osf.io/preprints/os...

The US Department of Justice has cemented its position that Google’s monopoly over search will not be dismantled without structural separations. Karina Montoya provides a breakdown of the changes in the DOJ’s revised remedies that are likely to be the focus of future proceedings.

Good, short thread on recent shifts in US public opinion.

Bolts asked Utah's lawmaker who sponsored the bill ending universal mail voting why he filed it. His reason? The Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025. He said Utah ranks low on Heritage's scorecard, & restricting mail voting would help. They're not just reshaping federal policy.

CCCR is out with a new election survey report today, focused on our national pre-election survey data (YouGov): "The American Voter in 2024." Here’s a thread highlighting some of the analysis of party-based agreement & disagreement. 1/ cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

🚨New Publication in New Media & Society🚨 Co-First-Authored w/ @m-dot-brown.bsky.social @meredithpruden.bsky.social & @markriedl.bsky.social Making academia suck less: Supporting early career researchers studying harmful content online through a feminist ethics of care. jlukito.com/s/brown-et-a...

Check out research centers, organizations, and scholars supported by the Knight Foundation here, including CCCR! bsky.app/starter-pack...

Our @cccr.bsky.social report from wave 1 of our election survey highlights areas of bipartisan agreement and areas of deep devisions, focusing on how information diets and political talk networks figure into it all. cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

Fixed link, sorry folks! cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

New CCCR 2024 survey report, just published today! Understanding 2024 Voters in Midwest Battleground States: A Survey Report on What Divides – and Unites – Partisans in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota PDF link: cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u... A 🧵... 1/

If you want to know what is the primary determinant of people's views on the economy, & whether they think "inflation" is a problem, it's this chart on media use. More than any other factor you can think of. We tried them all. But it's not really about education. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Seeing conspiracies about vote counting in states like WI where Trump won alongside a Democrat in a senate contest or governor’s race who also won. Here’s our @cccr.bsky.social Civic Sift explainer about why we can trust the vote count in Wisconsin. m.youtube.com/watch?v=ow-9...

Our new book, Storefront Campaigning, is out *today* and FREE to download until 12/12! doi.org/10.1017/9781... Using original data on field office locations, Sean Whyard and I show where offices are placed - and why they matter in presidential campaigns. (1/x)

We've launched a new YouTube channel called Civic Sift! We just posted our pilot episode interviewing WI election admins & other experts on how votes are counted: youtu.be/ow-9VDHL-uM Please like, share, & subscribe for more vids on political communication & democracy in 2025!