An evaluation of online information acquisition in US news deserts

Abstract

A growing concern is that as local newspapers disappear, communities lose trusted gatekeepers and develop information voids, creating openings for misinformation to thrive. Previous work has not evaluated whether residents of news deserts have developed different information acquisition habits. We fill this gap by directly comparing information consumption and referral patterns inside and outside of news deserts in a novel dataset of engagement with online media by millions of users on the Edge browser. We find little evidence that those in news deserts consume more low-quality sites or are more likely to be referred to low-quality sites from search engines or social media. We find some evidence that those in news deserts do consume more national news than locations with local media outlets. These results contribute to our understanding of how the loss of local newspapers has impacted online information acquisition.