Introduction

India has been struck hard by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic—daily cases and deaths peaked at more than 400,000 cases and 4,000 deaths, respectively, almost four to five times higher than the peak number of cases and deaths in the first wave.¹ The second wave was largely attributed to complacency by the Indian government.² As important as this may have been, it is crucial to examine the role of the media during the pandemic. In particular, what were the discussion topics on the eve of the second wave, and was COVID-19 a fading topic of discussion when the tragedy struck? In this paper, we answer this question and discuss how inadequate media coverage may have slowed India’s COVID-19 response.

News media is an important institution in a democracy. It is instrumental in conveying information to people and drawing the government’s attention to issues of concern, and provides a platform for advocacy and criticism of policies of the government in power.³ In the context of a pandemic, the media’s role becomes even more significant: It can be a vital source to identify early outbreaks, and it can inform the public about non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like maintaining physical distance, hand hygiene, wearing a mask, etc. to contain the spread of the disease and limit its impact.⁴ Although NPIs and government-imposed travel restrictions can be burdensome—requiring significant alterations in human behavior, which is difficult to maintain over extended periods⁵—the media can ensure compliance with these important measures by educating the public on their effectiveness at fighting diseases and preventing additional outbreaks.

Furthermore, research on epidemics has shown a cyclical behavioral response with respect to the disease; that is, more disease leads to more demand for self-protection, in turn leading to less disease; however, this results in less self-protection, which then leads to more disease.⁶ Unfortunately, this implies that until a sufficiently large number of people are vaccinated or protected from the disease, an epidemic is likely to come in waves. Therefore, it becomes imperative for the media and the government to repeatedly, perhaps in a novel manner, convey messages to the public regarding NPIs to the public to lessen the impact of the disease, primarily when the prevalence of the disease is in a downward trend.

This paper uses data from Twitter for 20 English-language media outlets across print, digital, and broadcasting and uses structural topic modeling (STM)⁷ to identify discussion topics and the evolution of these topics during the pandemic from March 2020 to April 2021. Our primary objective was to understand whether, on the eve of the second wave in India, topics related to COVID-19—in contrast to other topics of discussion, such as politics, protests, and entertainment—were a fading topic of discussion.

In the Indian context, this is the first paper to our knowledge that relies on Twitter data to look at the role of media during the pandemic using STM methods,⁸ a machine-assisted text reading tool. Our article complements the literature that has explored how mass media in post-independence India forced the Indian government to respond to threats of famine; as a result of this public pressure, India—despite its high level of poverty—has not had a large-scale famine post-independence.⁹ Moreover, research has also shown that state governments with a higher circulation of newspapers were more responsive to a decline in food production or damage caused to the crops by flooding.¹⁰ These papers highlight how media can draw government attention to issues of grave concern, especially for lower-income and historically disadvantaged groups and areas.

Data and Methodology

Our data consists of tweets posted by 20 English-language media outlets¹¹ from March 1, 2020 through April 30, 2021. Twint, an advanced Twitter scraping tool written in Python, was used to scrape all the tweets posted by the media outlets for the given dates. A total of 1,253,531 tweets were downloaded, of which the media outlet TIMES NOW, with more than 10 million followers, accounted for 156,523 (12.5%) of the tweets (see table 1). The data include the date and time of the tweet, the name of the media outlet, the actual content of the tweet, and the number of the retweets, likes, and replies for each tweet.

Table 1: Summary table

To identify tweets for this study, the data were analyzed to identify if “COVID” or “coronavirus” was mentioned in the tweet. If it was mentioned, then the tweet was labeled as a COVID-19 tweet. We then ran a logistic regression of the following form:

To get the proportion of tweets labeled as a COVID-19 tweet each month, we compute the average predicted probabilities for each month, using the margins command in STATA MP 16.1.

The second part of our analysis involves text mining of the tweets to discover topics associated with the tweet and how these topics evolve for different media outlets. We used STM to analyze the texts of tweets for each media outlet are analyzed using machine-assisted reading of text corpora.¹²

The STM model builds on the probabilistic topic models such as the Latent Dirichlet Allocation,¹³ Correlated Topic Models,¹⁴ and extensions of these models.¹⁵ However, the critical innovation in STM is to relate the topic models with information associated with the document or the tweet. In our paper, this information relates to the media outlet and the month they posted the tweet. In other words, STM, while discovering the latent topics in the tweet, also uses the information associated with the tweet, such as the media outlet that posted the tweet and the date when the tweet was posted.

Moreover, our structural model also allows the evolution of the topic to vary with each of the media outlets. Our purpose for this is to differentiate the topics of discussion across different media outlets. In particular, in our STM models, topic prevalence takes the following structural form:

In this, i is the topic of discussion, and the effect of the month on topic prevalence is estimated with a spline. The media outlet is interacted with the spline of the month to allow for topic prevalence to vary for the media outlet. Since STM can be computationally challenging, we select 10% of the population of tweets. The tweets were selected based on stratified random sampling without replacement. In particular, for each month, we randomly selected 10% of every media outlet’s tweets. A total of 125,606 tweets were part of the STM analysis (see table 1). Before the STM analysis, we prepared the data by removing infrequent words; in our analysis, if a word appears only in one tweet, it is dropped from the vocabulary. Based on this, a total of 107 (<0.1%) tweets were dropped. Our final data for the STM analysis was 125,499 tweets with a vocabulary of 29,999 words. The default initialization that we used was spectral, primarily because of its stability.

Next, we took the sample of 125,499 tweets and labeled each tweet with the dominant topic of discussion based on the STM analysis. We then made five categories based on the topic of discussion related to (1) coronavirus, case, vaccine, (2) China, border, import, (3) farmer, protest, law, Delhi, (4) elections, poll, assembly, and (5) others. We created a count of engagement for each tweet, which is the sum of retweets, likes, and replies. We then regress this count over the months while controlling for the media outlet, using negative binomial regression. In particular, we run the following regression:

Here, nbreg is negative binomial regression and subscript i is the index for the tweet.

Our model selection for the number of topics was based on a data-driven approach. We performed several automated diagnostic tests, such as computation of held-out likelihood and residual analysis and compared the models with the varying topic along each of these criteria. In addition, we also report results associated with semantic-coherence for each of the models.¹⁶ There is always a possibility in STMs to produce topics that would be judged nonsensical by human domain experts. To minimize this, we selected the model that had fewer outlier topics based on semantic-coherence and also had higher exclusivity of the topics. Exclusivity of topic refers to words that have high overall frequency but at the same time are exclusive to the topic. Based on our diagnostic tests, we selected a model with 40 topics.

We should note that possible limitations of our analysis are that these data are limited to English media outlets and their messages on Twitter. The stories covered on Twitter could be very different from stories covered in print or discussed on news broadcasts, so they are not representative of the overall media discussion. In addition, the audience of the English-language media outlets on social media platforms could be different, for example, from the audience on other vernacular media outlets. It could be possible that other vernacular media outlets have a higher coverage of COVID-19 compared to the English-language media outlets.

Results

Based on the logistic regression, we found that the average proportion of daily tweets that mention “covid” or “coronavirus” was lowest in February 2021. It fell from a high of 52.9% (95% confidence interval [CI]; 52.6% to 53.3%) in April 2020 to 9.2% (95% CI; 9.0% to 9.4%) in February 2021. This pattern was observed across all the media outlets (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Average proportion of daily tweets that mention “covid” or “coronavirus”

Our next set of results relates to the STM analysis. The objective was to exploit the machine-assisted reading of the tweets across all the media outlets to discover the topics of discussion and how each of these topics evolved. Based on model diagnostics (see appendix 1 for a discussion on this), a 40-topic model was estimated with spectral initialization using STM. For our paper, we focus on general topics that relate to (a) COVID-19, coronavirus, vaccine, (b) elections and politics, (c) farmers protests and agitations, and (d) foreign affairs that include border issues with China.

Next, we plotted topic prevalence as a smooth function of time, which in our setting is the month (the topic prevalence model was related to the spline of the month), holding the media outlet at the sample median (see figure 2). Our results indicate that topics related to COVID-19 were the dominant topics of discussion from March 2020 until mid-May 2020; from then until the middle of June 2020, the conversation shifted to foreign affairs and border-related issues with China. Beginning in mid-September 2020, the topic of discussion turned to elections and farmers’ protests. State assembly elections in Bihar¹⁷ dominated the debate from mid-September until December 2020, when farmers’ protests began to dominate the discussion, even though there was an influx of debate related to COVID-19 vaccination.

Figure 2: Topic prevalence as a smooth function of the month, where the media outlet is at the sample median

From early February 2021, state elections (in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry)¹⁸ dominated the conversation (see figure 2). Next, we conducted a similar analysis that allowed for topic prevalence to differ across media outlets (see figure 3). Topic prevalence varied across media outlets; for example, for public news agencies such as DD News and PIB India, the dominant topic of discussion in the initial months was related to COVID-19 and coronavirus. However, over time, this declined and shifted to the issues related to finance and projects. For private media outlets in broadcasting, such as IndiaToday, NDTV, TIMES NOW, the dominant topic in the early months of the pandemic was related to COVID-19 and coronavirus; however, in subsequent months, border-related issues with China, elections, and farmers’ protests gained prominence. A similar pattern was observed for print media outlets such as The Hindu, The Indian Express, and The Times of India. However, a common feature across all media outlets was that, on the eve of the second wave (the period between mid-February 2021 and mid-March 2021), topics related to COVID-19 and coronavirus had insignificant coverage relative to other topics; the news instead was focused on topics like farmers protests, India-China border issues, state assembly elections, and cricket.

Figure 3: Topic prevalence as a smooth function of the month, across media outlets

For the next part of the analysis, we study the response that a particular topic elicits from the audience in the form of count of retweets, likes, and replies. In particular, in our sample of 125,499 tweets used for the STM analysis, we label each tweet with the dominant topic of discussion. We then made five categories based on the topic of discussion related to (1) COVID-19, coronavirus, case, and vaccine, (2) China, border, import, (3) farmer, protest, law, Delhi, (4) elections, poll, assembly, and (5) others. Our results indicate that COVID-19 related topics had the least engagement in terms of the number of retweets, likes, and replies compared to other issues—and this trend is consistent across the entire timeline of the study. Issues related to China, elections, and farmers’ protests had significantly higher counts of retweets, likes, and replies (see figure 4). This is an important finding, as it shows that, compared to other topics, there is a relative lack of engagement on (or interest in) topics related to COVID-19 among Twitter users.

Figure 4: Count of Twitter retweets, likes, and replies over time across topics

Conclusion

Government complacency was identified as a critical factor for the surge of COVID-19 cases in India during the second wave.¹⁹ However, little attention has been paid to the activities of the media on the eve of the second COVID-19 surge, where peak daily cases and deaths were four to five times larger than the peak in the first wave.²⁰ In this paper, using structural topic models based on machine-assisted text reading of tweets, we identify topics of discussion that were making waves in the time of the pandemic in Indian media, and particularly the period immediately before the second surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results show that discussions related to COVID-19 were at the lowest ebb on the eve of the second wave of the pandemic. Media attention was diverted from COVID-19 to topics related to farmers’ protests, elections, and entertainment (such as cricket matches in the Indian Premier League). This was true across all media outlets—print, broadcasting, and digital, both private and public—with varying agendas.

Media is an important institution in a democracy. It conveys information to the public and draws the government’s attention to issues that concern the public. It acts as a bridge between the people and the government. During a global pandemic that has devasted lives and livelihoods, the media’s role becomes crucial. News institutions are essential to bringing the government’s attention to early outbreaks while also nudging, using novel messaging, the tired public to adopt and sustain potentially burdensome NPIs, such as maintaining physical distance and hand hygiene, wearing a mask, etc. to contain the spread of the disease and limit its impact.²¹ Unfortunately, on the eve of the second COVID-19 surge, discussion related to COVID-19 was at its lowest point across all the media outlets. Moreover, COVID-19 related discussions attracted the least attention on Twitter compared to other topics, such as farmers protests, elections, court cases, and police activity.

Our paper has important implications for the future role of media in the Indian context. As we move forward, it is evident that new variants of the virus with varying transmissibility will emerge. There is also limited evidence on the efficacy of existing vaccines on newer variants.²² Therefore, NPIs will continue to play an important role in containing the deadly impact of the virus.²³ Given its vast networks of reporters, the media could play a more proactive role in identifying early outbreaks. Secondly, along with the government, the media would need to innovate its messaging regarding the NPIs to the broader public because NPIs are costly to sustain. Thirdly, research on epidemics has shown a cyclical behavioral response with respect to the disease; that is, more disease leads to more demand for self-protection, in turn leading to less disease; however, this results in less self-protection, and this behavior change then leads to more disease.²⁴

In light of this, it becomes imperative for both media institutions and governments to reinforce the messaging regarding the pandemic when the prevalence of the disease is at its lowest—which is just the opposite of what we observed in this analysis. Even though media is free to cover any topic in a democracy, we argue that it has to play an essential role during a pandemic to limit the disease’s impact on people. This did not happen on the eve of the second wave, and the lack of relevant information likely intensified the disastrous impact of the wave.

Appendix 1: Model selection for the number of topics

Our model selection for the number of topics was based on a data-driven approach. We performed several automated diagnostic tests, such as computation of held-out likelihood and residual analysis and compared the models with the varying topics along each of these criteria. In addition, we also report results associated with semantic-coherence for each of the models.²⁵ There is always a possibility of statistical topic models to produce topics that would be judged nonsensical by human domain experts. To minimize this probability, we selected the model with fewer topics that were outliers based on the semantic-coherence and at the same time had higher exclusivity of the topics. Exclusivity of topic refers to words that have high overall frequency but at the same time are exclusive to the topic. Based on our diagnostic tests, we selected a model with 40 topics.

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There are, he believed, two essential pillars of American democracy: one the “sanctity of the law” and the other the “freedom of the press.” If either pillar is shaken, damaged or undermined, he warned, then so too is our democracy.

This was the judgment of Edward R. Murrow, the iconic CBS newsman who hired me in 1957. It was the subject that absorbed him, that both fascinated and frightened him—the “fragile” nature of American democracy. Time and again, he would return to it, always with questions, one building on another.

This was understandable. Murrow had covered the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930’s. How could democracy have caved to fascism, he would ask, in a country that seemed so rooted in Western values? How could a Hitler have emerged in the heart of a civilized Europe? How could rational thinking have so easily and dramatically succumbed to irrational ranting? How?, he kept asking. How?

More than once, he told me, he had agonized about these questions with an old friend, an Oxford don. After a while, both reluctantly concluded that democracy, while glittering and appealing, was at its core a fragile enterprise, dependent on an almost unnatural social and political cooperation between ruler and ruled. Unnatural, they thought, because it was so unusual. They also concluded that this cooperation rested on an assumption (questionable at best) that the two pillars of democracy—the sanctity of the law and the freedom of the press—would always remain demonstrably firm, enduring and reliable. For if one of these supporting pillars of democracy weakened, its steadiness of resolve suddenly shaken, its durability left open to doubt, then questions would logically arise about whether the structure itself had been damaged—and how badly? Did the guardrails assuring a solid legal system and a free press hold, considering the political crisis eating away at the foundations of American democracy? Or might they too crumble under this unrelenting pressure?

Let us assume for a moment that the respectable duo of a pioneering journalist and an Oxford don were asked to examine the impact of the Trump era on American democracy. Was it so profound that it weakened the underlying structure of American democracy, thus possibly opening the door to a populist authoritarianism? Or, was it just a very scary time that, with care and wise political leadership, would pass, as did the Civil War and the McCarthy era? For answers, Murrow and the don felt they would first have to examine the “sanctity of the law” before turning to the “freedom of the press.”

Very quickly, they would notice that lawyers loyal to the former president exploited the legal system to file dozens of lawsuits aimed at overturning election results in several key states. Their efforts so far have failed, and a number, including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, may soon lose their license to practice law in certain states. Election audits, lengthy and costly, have been launched in some states, also designed to overturn election results. Most audits have been dismissed; a few continue. Several states have attempted to rewrite election laws in a clear effort to limit minority voting, which, if successful, would be a major assault on a fundamental of American democracy. Some of these legal efforts have failed, but they continue and remain an underlying challenge to the American legal system.

Also, the multi-faceted corruption of the Trump administration, especially William Barr’s embarrassing tenure as attorney general, uncorked a shame that still hovers over the Justice Department and shoots clouds over the entire legal system.

So has the “sanctity of the law” been undermined? Yes, they would probably conclude. But does the legal system still function? Yes, it does, to a limited extent. The guardrails of the American legal system have held.

Now, to the issue of “freedom of the press,” a delicate and essential ingredient of democracy, without which there could be no democracy. Who, for example, would be positioned to speak truth to power? For Murrow and the don, “freedom of the press” has always been the guarantor of freedom. Remove it, or whittle its essence down to meaningless clichés, and freedom slips out of the window of democracy on only a slight breeze.

That was why former President Trump’s early and repeated attacks on journalists as “enemies of the people” who “poison” the public well with “fake news,” represented such a powerful and enduring blow to democracy. Wittingly or not, he played on the fact that American journalism was experiencing serious problems anyway, and he exploited them. For decades, it was losing the trust of the American people, and it now ranks last in trustworthiness among people in 46 countries. The Internet challenge hurt its bottom line disastrously, sending one-quarter of American newspapers into bankruptcy. Fox cable news has risen to challenge and compete successfully with the remaining news outlets, setting one large part of the media at war with the other part not only for commercial profits but also over the very definition of truth. Without a common understanding of truth, how are the American people to decide on the authenticity of politicians and their policies? Journalism still functions courageously in America, but it faces daily challenges of enormous consequence. Murrow used to say that it was no surprise that autocrats, on their rise to power, seek first to contain and control the media; the rest was easy.

If the journalist and the don agreed that the guardrails held on the “sanctity” of the American legal system, though with serious reservations, they could reach no such agreement on “freedom of the press,” which many students and practitioners believe has suffered devastating setbacks in recent years. There are still major newspapers and networks doing superb daily journalism, never an easy feat, but even these news outlets have lost the trust of many Americans. Restoring that trust is possible but difficult, and in the current political climate maybe impossible.

It is comforting to believe that American democracy, though weakened, will bounce back. It has always been considered something special, promised a glorious life by God, gifted founders and geography. Politicians claim, though with diminished credibility, that the country is “resilient.” No one should ever bet against America, they say. Even after the Civil War, we recouped our energy, drive and determination, and we can do it again, so the optimistic argument goes.

But if we are to be honest with ourselves (and now is a perfect time to start), let us recognize that nowhere in the voluminous parchments of history is it written, or is it assured, that a political undertaking, whether it be democracy or authoritarianism, is assured a lifetime measured in millennia.

Alexander’s adventures carried Greece to the edge of China, but then, with his death, his accomplishments faded and folded. The Roman Empire had its moment in the sun, as did Napoleon have his. The Bolsheviks launched a revolution, and Hitler had a Third Reich. All assumed they were destined for eternal rule, but all collapsed in a dark valley of corruption, greed and decadence.

American democracy is different, no doubt. Hopefully, it can overcome its current difficulties, recover its rigor and remain a beacon of hope, light and freedom for people everywhere. But if Murrow and his Oxford don are right, the American people must now come up with the means and determination to restore the “sanctity of the law” and the “freedom of the press” to their former positions of respect, honor and popular acceptance, no easy task even in more generous times.

Then and only then will American democracy have proven that it is still capable of creating and sustaining political miracles.

      

In her new book, “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech,” Martha Minow highlights how the government has helped shape the media from the printing press to the internet, and why the state of our current political discourse warrants further government action.

On July 29, Minow will be joined by Brookings Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne Jr. and Visiting Fellow Tom Wheeler for a discussion on the book and the future of the news in the United States. Speakers will explore the role of government in media, the nuances of the First Amendment, and potential reforms.

Viewers can submit questions for speakers by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at @BrookingsGov by using #SavingTheNews.

Click here to purchase a copy of “Saving the News.”

      

By embedding educational content into entertaining stories with compelling characters, high-quality children’s media can engage young viewers and foster their learning. From “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” to “Sesame Street,” public media have long targeted this blending of education with entertainment. Public media have become a trusted source for children’s programming, in part because of their relative independence from commercial influences. As such, public media are able to take the time required to intentionally target robust learning goals across developmental domains.

New research from Education Development Center (EDC) and SRI International provides a compelling example of how digital media can promote both academic and social learning for young children. Our research team conducted two experimental studies of the PBS Kids series “Molly of Denali,” an award-winning series designed to teach children ages 3–8 how to use informational text (defined as written, oral, or visual text designed to inform). Using informational text is a foundational skill both for succeeding in school and being an informed adult. In the show, informational text is interwoven with everyday life in Alaska. Molly and her friends model the use and creation of informational text to solve authentic problems, relying on a wide range of sources, such as field guides, instruction manuals, maps, weather reports, and even a recipe for homemade mosquito repellent.

In addition, “Molly of Denali” is the first nationally distributed children’s series in the U.S. to feature an Alaska Native lead character. The producers at GBH intentionally addressed both informational text learning goals and improving the diversity of children’s media, essentially doubling its educational return on investment. And, with all this, “Molly of Denali” is designed to be fun. Children (and more than a few adults) are pulled into Molly’s world, where strong narratives bring a wealth of learning along for the ride.

Digital media can be an effective, light-touch intervention to promote learning

Researchers at EDC and SRI designed a randomized controlled trial to examine the potential of “Molly of Denali” to support informational text skills. We distributed data-enabled tablets to a national sample of low-income, first-grade children; children randomized to the treatment group received tablets pre-loaded with “Molly of Denali” videos and games, while those in the control group had access to informational text resources blocked. We assessed children’s abilities to use informational text both before and after the nine-week intervention, using a researcher-developed measure of children’s disposition to use informational text to solve a realistic problem (e.g., selecting a field guide to identify a bird, rather than a telescope) and their ability to identify and use different structural and graphical features of informational text (e.g., the table of contents).

Our findings demonstrated that access to “Molly of Denali” resources had a positive and statistically significant impact on children’s informational text abilities (based on scores from a measure developed by the research team). Notably, we replicated these findings with a separate national sample. Replication is a critical—but often missing—step in educational research to demonstrate that the original findings are not caused by something unusual about the original study or participants. This replication increases our confidence in our conclusion: “Molly of Denali” teaches children how to use informational text.

It did not take much time or support for children to learn from watching “Molly of Denali” at home. Children in the treatment group engaged with “Molly of Denali” videos and games an average of one hour per week over nine weeks. Often, educational interventions require more intensity and a longer period to impact children’s learning. And, although other research has shown the importance of parents using digital media to learn with their children, in these studies, parent co-engagement was not significantly related to child outcomes; in other words, parents did not have to help in order for children to learn from “Molly of Denali.”

The potential for this type of light-touch intervention to improve children’s academic skills is impressive, especially given how entertaining and non-didactic the series is. “Molly of Denali” instructional content is embedded within narratives, and interviews with parents and children during our pilot research showed that most were not aware of the focus on informational text—yet learning happened anyway.

Our findings are also consistent with other research showing the effectiveness of digital media in teaching young children across domains, including long-term impacts of offerings from public media. After a year of remote and hybrid learning, many families are concerned about the negative impacts of excessive screen time; however, not all screen time is equivalent. Our messaging to caregivers must be more nuanced than “limit screen time,” as such a blanket recommendation implicitly categorizes high-quality educational media along with video games and social media. We should encourage wise media consumption, too, where materials are chosen based on educational or other values—not simply their ability to hold kids’ attention. This kind of balanced approach to child development can use high-quality educational media along with off-screen activities, including creative play, exploring the outdoors, and engaging in physical activity.

Diversity and inclusion in children’s media are attainable

Children’s learning from digital media can also go beyond academic content and can provide prosocial messages, too, as was the case with diversity and inclusion messaging guiding the production of “Molly of Denali.” The series is saturated with Alaska Native values, and Molly relies on her community for information and support. Molly is both Alaska Native and female, representing a critical diversity that is often absent from children’s media and books.

Importantly, the storylines actively counter harmful stereotypes against Alaska Natives and other Native American communities. Indigenous characters are not depicted as static “others” from the past but, rather, as community members with vibrant lives. For example, Molly’s grandpa is a volcanologist and her mom is a pilot. Modern technology is present and used, along with traditional resources. Alaska itself is another character, and a sense of place is central to the show. “Molly of Denali” engages with difficult topics, such as the traumatic use of boarding schools to erase Indigenous culture, in age-appropriate and thoughtful ways. Though viewers’ attitudes on these dimensions were not part of our study, research shows that this kind of representation matters. When children see positive examples of people like themselves, it promotes a positive racial and ethnic identity, increases self-esteem, fosters resiliency, and perhaps even improves economic outcomes.

This cultural responsiveness is the product of active, sustained effort by the public broadcasters that developed the media. The series was produced by GBH Kids in collaboration with the Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Ready To Learn Initiative. GBH has a robust Alaska Native advisory group, involves Alaska Native professionals at every stage of production, and ensures that the voice talent of Indigenous actors is used for all Indigenous characters. EDC and SRI followed this lead in our research: We convened an Alaska advisory board that included Indigenous experts to review our materials, assessments, and procedures, and included families from Alaska in the pilot and (limited by COVID-19 to an extent) in the randomized controlled trial as well.

Public media provides broad reach at low cost

With their wide reach, public media represent a relatively low-cost approach to reaching millions of young children with digital media that can improve learning. While there are other sources of educational media, public media provide an essential service and are a trusted source that families can turn to for programming. Public media also promote equity, as distribution through regular television means that computers with broadband internet are not required to access quality materials that contribute to children’s learning. This can help us address the digital divide that threatens so many families’ access to these materials, gaps that have become even more apparent during the pandemic.

This past year has highlighted just how vulnerable our children are. As we address months of unfinished learning due to the pandemic and centuries of racial injustice, we need to consider the important role that educational programs like “Molly of Denali” and other public media can play in helping to support students’ academic and social growth.

      

Quinta Jurecic is a Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is a Senior Editor at Lawfare, where she was previously the Managing Editor, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times as well as the Washington Post, where she served as an editorial writer. She is the co-host of the Lawfare Podcast’s “Arbiters of Truth” series on misinformation and disinformation, social media platforms and the online information ecosystem.

      

Mass shootings that result in mass casualties are almost a weekly occasion in the United States, which—not coincidentally—also has the most guns per capita in the world. Viewed from outside the U.S., it seems that Americans are not bothered by the constant deadly gun violence and have simply adapted to it. Yet, our analysis of the well-being costs of gun violence—using Twitter data to track real-time responses throughout the course of these appalling events—suggest that is not necessarily the case. We focus on the two March 2021 shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, and compare to similar data for the “1 October” (Las Vegas) and El Paso shootings a few years prior. (Details on our methodology can be found at the end of this blog.)

A reason for the one-sided debate on guns is that beyond the gruesome body counts, we do not have many tools for assessing the large—but unobservable—effects of this violence on family members, friends, and neighbors of the victims, as well as on society in general. By assessing how emotions evolve over time, real changes can be seen in Twitter messages. Our analysis shows that society is increasingly angered by gun violence, rather than simply adapting to it.

A striking characteristic of the response to the 1 October shooting is the immediate influx of users sending their thoughts and players to the victims and the Las Vegas community. Figure 1 shows the top emoji usage and “praying hands” being the most frequently used emoji. Although that is still the most used emoji in response to the other shootings, the margin between “praying hands” and other emojis has substantially decreased in recent responses to Atlanta and Boulder. Our focus is on the “yellow face” emojis, which can correlate to six primary emotions categories: surprise, sadness, disgust, fear, anger, and neutral. While the majority of face emojis reflect emotions of sadness in the 1 October and El Paso shooting, new emojis like the “red angry face” show greater feelings of anger in the Atlanta and Boulder shootings shown in Figure 3.

Figure 1. Top 10 emojis used in response to the 1 October shooting

Source: Authors

Figure 2. Top 10 emojis used in response to the El Paso and Dayton shootings

Source: Authors

Figure 3. Top 10 emojis used in response to the Atlanta and Boulder shootings

Source: Authors

Taking a deeper look at the emoji usage of the Atlanta and Boulder shootings, the “praying hands” emoji usage was often paired with “broken heart” and “sobbing face” emojis, and belonged primarily to retweets (above 80 percent) of tweets made by celebrities, politicians, and news correspondents. Among other things, this demonstrates the power that users with a large number of followers have on the response and sentiment shared online. The “US flag” emoji was not used as a sign of patriotism but represents tweets from outside the United States reporting on the event. For the Atlanta and Boulder shooting, the “tears of joy” emoji was often used in tweets claiming that the Atlanta shootings did not pertain to race and that the belief had been perpetuated by “mainstream media” or in tweets not related to the shooting. The “red angry face” was widely used in tweets that expressed disdain and confusion over the gun violence and mass shootings.

Hashtags are another powerful tool used in social media to express opinions and reactions to recent events. In the 1 October shooting, hashtags like #prayforvegas were popular, as seen in Figure 4. Another notable hashtag used is #vegasstrong, which gained popularity as Las Vegas was trying to recover from the tragedy and now, variations of #*cityname*strong are a popular reaction to mass casualties since 2017. Yet as American communities become accustomed to recurring mass gun violence, emboldening becomes more difficult. As in Figures 5 and 6, hashtags like #elpasostrong and #boulderstrong are still used in reaction to these mass shootings but we see wider usage of other hashtags like #stopasianhate, or those related to gun reform. We also see this trend occurring in the earlier El Paso shooting, which reflected anti-immigrant sentiments emboldened by the previous administration, and also included hashtags such as #trump, #whitesupremacistterrorism, and #guncontrol now.

Figure 4. Hashtags used in response to the 1 October shooting

Source: Authors

Figure 5. Hashtags used in response to the El Paso and Dayton shooting

Source: Authors

Figure 6. Hashtags used in response to the Atlanta and Boulder shootings

Source: Authors

One of the difficulties in analyzing hashtags is that they often vary in the exact spelling or phrasing. We deal with this by putting the variations of an overall phrase into a hashtag bundle, as in Figure 7.  These bundles include those that mention “prayfor” and is typically followed by a city name, “morethan” which is part of the full phrase “morethanthoughtsandprayers.” The category of “gun” most often refers to “guncontrolnow,” “gunreform,” among others that appear in the word clouds. Finally, there is the variation of a “*cityname*strong.” Since the 1 October shooting has more than three times the hashtag usage as both the Atlanta and Boulder shootings combined, we compare the relative usage of the hashtag bundles. El Paso data is excluded since the hashtag usage is not nearly as concentrated around such phrases.

There is a major decrease in the share of hashtags praying for the victims, their families, or the community for recent mass shootings. Conversely, there is an increase in the sentiment that we need more than “thoughts and prayers.” The same is true in the rallying effect that a mass shooting used to have, with a decrease in “*cityname*strong” in the Atlanta and Boulder shootings. Hashtag usage related to gun control and reform are quite similar across the shootings, even in the context of the more supportive nature of the 1 October responses.

Figure 7. Relative popularity of hashtag bundles between the different shootings

Source: Authors

While there are, of course, limitations to what we can infer from this data, it provides a glimpse of a more generalized shift in sentiment away from passive mourning to anger and desire for an active policy response. This is particularly the case when shootings are targeted toward a specific group, as in the case of politically motivated violence against Hispanics in the August 2019 El Paso shooting and Asian Americans in the case of Atlanta.

We need to know much more about the social and emotional costs of this violence—not least as it seems to come in contagious waves across events that exacerbate an already gruesome death toll. This is particularly important at a time when gun violence-related events have increased by roughly 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, while opioid and other drug overdoses have almost doubled, in large part due to the toll of the COVID-19 shock on mental health (these numbers are from in-progress analysis of EMS first responder data by one of us—Graham—with Emily Dobson of the University of Maryland). At this juncture, though, it is our hope that even this limited assessment of those costs—and the increasing concerns about gun violence—can translate into support for policies to reduce it. While gun reforms have proven politically difficult to pass in the past, the new administration is at least providing an opening to do so. What is clear, though, is that the victims of this violence—and their grieving family members and friends and an increasingly tattered social fabric—deserve more than thoughts and prayers.

Note on methodology

Several data collections are utilized for this study that pertain to different mass shootings in the U.S., starting with a collection created by University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries in the week following the 1 October shooting in 2017 and contains more than 14 million tweets. We compiled three more collections, including one for the El Paso shooting in August 2019 with approximately 700,000 tweets that also contains reactions to the Dayton, Ohio shooting that occurred one day later. The other two collections refer to the Atlanta and Boulder shootings that occurred in March 2021. Since the Atlanta and Boulder shootings occurred within six days of each other, many of the tweets discussing the Boulder shooting often mention the Atlanta shooting and vice versa. These two collections where combined and duplicate tweets removed, resulting in over 2 million tweets collected from March 16-25. While Twitter data does not provide robust detail on the socioeconomic and demographic data, Twitter users, who comprise 22 percent of the American population, are typically younger, more educated, and wealthier than the general public.

The tweets were catalogued using the open-source tool known as Twarc, which can archive tweets that pertain to a specific search term like “vegas,” as an example. For the figures shown here, we focused on the hashtag and emoji usage, and extracted them from the “full text” of the tweets. The emojis were then converted from Unicode to their written-out names. A greater discussion on the methodology and drawbacks of Twitter data can be found in our blog “How misinformation spread on Twitter.”

      

Today Facebook’s Oversight Board, (its self-designated “supreme court”) upheld the decision to ban Trump from its platform. His account was suspended the day after the January 6 insurrection for his role in promoting and condoning the violent attacks on the Capitol that resulted in 5 deaths, at least 138 injuries, destruction of property, and over 400 arrests so far. However, the board took issue with the indefinite nature of the ban. The ruling stated that Facebook itself should reevaluate the ban within 6 months of this decision.

This is just the tip of the iceberg on the myriad legal and ethical issues coming up in the years ahead as we struggle to balance the power of private social media companies with the demands of free speech and the importance of the market place of ideas. In the meantime, the political question is what does this mean, if anything, for Donald Trump’s future?

For four years the press and the public reacted to an unprecedented barrage of Trump Facebook posts and tweets—sometimes appearing early in the morning or late at night. It wasn’t too hard to distinguish between his own messaging and official messaging. His own was more outrageous, more prone to spelling errors and often at odds with what the rest of his government was saying. His musings appeared regularly on television news shows, often followed by administration officials trying gamely to figure out what he meant or how it wasn’t really the opposite of what his government had just said.

And then, because of decisions by Facebook and Twitter, he went dark only a few weeks before he left office for what has been a relatively quiet retirement at Mar a Lago. What impact did going dark have on his popularity?

Following is a graph from RealClearPolitics that charts the average of Trump’s approval ratings starting on January 6, the day of the insurrection at the Capitol, to the end of April. On the day of the insurrection Trump was viewed unfavorably by slightly more than half of the public and the gap between his unfavorable ratings and his favorable ratings was 10.5%. Ten days after the insurrection, as more and more people digested Trump’s role in what happened that day, the gap between his unfavorable ratings and his favorable ratings grew to 21.6% of the public. But in the months following he gained back some of what he had lost and the gap has remained more or less stable—at about 16% as of the end of April.

So far three months of relative silence from Trump on social media do not seem to have affected his standing with hardcore supporters that appear to constitute between 35% and 41% of the electorate. These numbers are more or less the same as Trump’s numbers throughout most of the second, third and fourth years of his presidency, which were notable for the fact that unlike previous presidents he never obtained favorable ratings from 50% of voters. The stability in Trump’s numbers leads to a variety of hypotheses about the importance of social media.

First, it is possible that Trump supporters, hostile to the media and big corporations, do not respond to survey research and thus support for Trump is lower in polls than it is in reality. This possibility is supported by the fact that turnout for Trump in the actual 2020 election was far greater than many polls had predicted.

The second possibility is that the impact of social media on politics is not as influential as members of the political establishment and the press think it is. A Pew poll from this spring found that 70% of social media users “never or rarely post or share about political, social issues.”

In other words, a subsection of the population—probably the same people who, in a different generation would have been mailing letters or calling into radio shows—create a large portion of the social media noise.

The third possibility is that by the time of his election loss Trump had created a hardcore base within the Republican Party that was powerful enough to dictate internal party decisions. Look, for instance, at the attempt to dislodge Trump critic Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership position. That base may have solidified to the point where it does not need constant tending by Trump himself, thus making access to social media platforms less crucial. In spite of his being banned from social media his support among Republican voters has remained strong this year, as the following table using data from the Morning Consult/Politico poll indicates.

Table 1: Donald Trump’s favorability among Republican voters (Morning Consult/Politico)

This strength, however, may have come at a cost. While Trump appears to have solidified his hold over the Republican Party, he also appears to have damaged the brand. Gallup has asked about party identification in polls going back decades. By the end of the first quarter of 2021 they found that people who identify as Democrats were more numerous than people who identified as Republicans by a margin of 49% to 40%. This is the biggest gap in party identification in a decade. It also correlates with an increase in people who say they are independent.

My final hypothesis is that even if Trump does return to social media, it is possible that his pronouncements will not be magnified by the mainstream press, especially television, now that he is no longer president. During his presidency Trump’s most outrageous lies were covered because he was the president and many reporters and editors felt that they had an obligation to report what the president said. They may not feel the same obligation to an ex-president in Florida. (In the week after he was silenced, misinformation about the election dropped 73% according to a study by Zignal Labs.) This possibility has, no doubt, been a concern to Trump who just recently launched a new site “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” as a way of getting around the social media ban.

So while today’s decision has momentous consequences for social media in the coming decade, it may not have momentous consequences for Donald Trump’s future. He remains the undisputed leader of a political party but that party has lost two elections in a row (2018 and 2020). In four years as president of the United States he was unable to expand his base. And now, the changing demographics of the country seem to be working against him. With or without social media he may have trouble expanding his following enough to become president again.

      

White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s first press conference marked a significant change in tone from the previous administration. The Trump presidency was plagued by four years of escalating tension and deepening cynicism between communications staff and the media, often the result of mutual mistrust and the president’s frequent attacks on the press. From his first days in office, former President Trump favored using his personal Twitter account over the tools available to his communications team, giving him total control over his message and a channel directly to his followers.

Hours after Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46^th president, Psaki took the first question of her first press briefing. Asked whether she saw her primary role as promoting the interests of the president or providing the “unvarnished truth” to reporters, she responded in part, “I have deep respect for the role of a free and independent press in our democracy…there will be moments when we disagree…but we have a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”

Biden’s senior communications staff made history as the first all-female communications team but that landmark will likely prove less memorable than the dramatic shift in strategy that has marked Biden’s communications approach in his first 100 days.

According to data by UC Santa Barbara’s The American Presidency Project, the Trump White House bested itself in setting the record for the longest amount of time without holding a formal press briefing, when it went over 400 days without one.

Stephanie Grisham, who spent eight months as press secretary for Donald Trump and became the first press secretary in history never to hold a formal briefing, told ABC News, “President Trump communicates directly with the American people more than any president in history. The fact that the White House Press Corps can no longer grandstand on TV is of no concern to us.”

Indeed, in the Trump White House, his press secretaries’ briefings never proved very beneficial, perhaps most notably because the president preferred to be his own spokesman. Whatever views he shared on Twitter were far more likely to dominate the headlines than whatever a press secretary or another appointed official said.

It is a stark contrast to Joe Biden’s first months in office. Although he broke a century-old record by waiting seven weeks to give his first formal briefing, his staff hosted briefings every working day. There has been a great deal of conjecture over whether the decision to wait nearly two months for a Biden press conference was a result of wanting a major policy victory to announce or hoping to avoid a public relations gaffe.

It may, however, be neither. It may be a sign that Joe Biden has empowered his communications staff and several disciplined spokespeople to deliver his messages for him, especially when they focus on his efforts to bring relief to the American people.

“He’s the president, he’s got a lot on his plate. We have people fanning out every single day across different media to amplify his message,” deputy communications director Kate Berner said in an interview with Politico.

It does appear that the return to more traditional approaches in communications tactics is more comfortable for the press who covers the president, as the questions and criticisms of how the media should and did cover the Trump presidency have disappeared in the first months of the Biden presidency.

Communicating amid crisis

It is often said that, in a crisis, it is important to communicate early and often. Upon taking office, President Biden laid out a series of goals for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, which had already claimed 403,000 American lives by Inauguration Day. One week into his presidency, a newly-created White House COVID-19 Response Team began hosting daily virtual briefings. Notably absent from these briefings was the president himself, in yet another modification from the prior administration—where former President Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks were generally confusing and sometimes downright dangerous—as when he suggested the coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectants into the body.

The COVID-19 Response Team briefings have been clear and matter-of-fact, following a pattern that includes senior health advisors sharing data and progress reports. A key member of the Response Team is Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom Joe Biden asked to stay on from the Trump task force as a chief advisor. Emerging as the most popular government official out of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci has remained a highly-visible spokesman, sharing updates everywhere from media interviews to late night talk shows to celebrity Instagram accounts.

The administration’s approach to the economic recession created out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its re-engagement on the world stage, including efforts to incorporate climate policies into every area of government, have presented numerous opportunities for getting proactive messaging out to the American people. In these areas too, the Biden White House has chosen to let surrogates do the talking.

Reaching people where they are

Although his predecessor was well-known for his Twitter presence up until the company permanently suspended his account, the Biden team has not sworn off social media, in large part because it remains a popular conduit to the American public. Research shows that most Americans get their news online and increasing numbers are getting it from social media. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield has confirmed that social media will be one way the White House communicates but, “You can expect that President Biden is not breaking news at 1 a.m. on Twitter.”

While President Biden’s social media accounts have been unremarkable in the early days of his presidency, especially in comparison to his predecessor, it is worth remembering that as Vice President, Joe Biden became a semi-sensation, regularly featuring in viral and humorous memes.

Will this approach work?

How Americans get and share information constantly evolves, which means each new administration grapples with the best ways to spread its messages. It may seem quaint now to remember that it took until 2009, for example, for Barack Obama to become the first sitting president to appear on a late night talk show.

Whether the Biden White House’s approach to communications will prove to be successful remains to be seen. If the president’s policies to address the current health and economic crises are successful, it may be in the administration’s interests to have the president highly visible to claim the wins. It is also possible by then, the memory of Donald Trump’s late-night tweets will have waned, and a majority of people will crave an American president back in the spotlight. On the other hand, if Joe Biden can deliver results to the American public, that may be what truly matters most when election time rolls around again.

      

Chosen by broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to become one of what came to be known as the Murrow Boys, Kalb captures the excitement of being present at the creation of a whole new way of bringing news immediately to the public. Cold War tensions were high between Eisenhower’s America and Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and Kalb was at the center, occupying a unique spot as a student of Russia tasked with explaining Moscow to Washington and the American public.

On April 15, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a fireside chat between Kalb and respected, long-time journalist and Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne for a discussion about Kalb’s book, journalism’s history, and life behind the Iron Curtain.

Viewers submitted questions via e-mail to events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at #AssignmentRussia.