As Election Day approaches, how are newsrooms tasked with covering contentious races handling the pressure? 10 editors at newsrooms in battleground districts or states to learn more about the opportunities and challenges they face. Read More

Public-friendly digital spaces where people feel welcome, make connections, build understanding, and work together can seem elusive. This work builds on our Civic Signals project to investigate how members of Vermont’s Front Porch Forum perceive the platform. Read More

Exploring how different racial and ethnic groups respond to bylines from journalists who share their race or ethnicity. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement set out to test two approaches in broadcast news: a more traditional just-the-facts style that lays out the corrections and a more empathetic style that walks viewers through the discovery of why the misperception is wrong. Read More

An examination of how Chicago news outlets covered migration reveals questions news organizations might want to consider when examining their migration coverage. Read More

Practicing engaged journalism, where newsrooms build relationships with their audience by responding to community concerns, can offer a lifeline. Read More

This report provides an overview of media coverage in the state of Georgia. Read More

A look at whether political partisanship is predictive of people's beliefs in true and false claims. Read More

How online multiple-choice quizzes present an opportunity to encourage readers to engage with fact-checking content and to help them learn. Read More

Understanding the needs of local news audiences is essential for a healthy media ecosystem. And before newsrooms can take steps toward meeting these needs, it’s crucial that they understand how people interact with local news, what issues they find important, and what communities feel underrepresented. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement talked to people living in areas defined as news deserts to find out where they’re getting local information – and if it’s helping them stay informed. Read More

As the 2022 midterm elections approach, newsrooms play an important role in warning audiences about misinformation. We held a symposium to help news leaders in battleground states learn how to detect & deal with false information. Read More

Stopping the spread of misinformation on Facebook is a difficult proposition. One of the reasons it is so difficult, particularly in the United States, is high levels of political polarization. Center for Media Engagement research shows that Democrats and Republicans are susceptible to believing misinformation about candidates from the opposing party and that Democrats and Republicans respond differently to fact checks. Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic upended many people’s day-to-day lives, and moved more interactions online. In this report, we analyze how the pandemic affected people’s use of search, social, and messaging platforms as well as their thoughts about the platforms. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement tested several versions of a Knowledge Panel — a search sidebar that provided information about a news outlet — to see which elements affected trust. Read More

Discussions of digital space often focus on eliminating troubling content or improving the user-friendliness of the design. We’re proposing that digital spaces, like the physical spaces we inhabit, should use public-friendly design. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement partnered with Vox and Spaceship Media to explore whether the design of online discussion groups can affect conversation quality and if Facebook Messenger can be used as an engagement tool. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement teamed up with the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life to examine how news organizations can best communicate information about how to register to vote. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement in the U.S. teamed up with researchers from Erasmus University in the Netherlands and NOVA University in Portugal to figure out how people from these three countries define hateful speech and whether they differentiate it from profanity. The results offer global guidance for social media platforms and news outlets on how to effectively create moderation guidelines that limit confusion about why certain posts and comments are removed while others are allowed. Read More

In an analysis of local Chicago news coverage, the Center for Media Engagement found that the media mentioned Chicago’s North / Downtown region more frequently than the West and South Sides and that there were differences in which topics were included in articles mentioning different parts of Chicago. This follows… Read More

The Center for Media Engagement examined how TV news stations can increase trust by including certain elements in a story. Read More

Providing reporter bios on a news website is a common practice. The Center for Media Engagement has already shown that reporter bios, when used in combination with other trust strategies, can boost reader trust in and engagement with news. Now we wanted to test how biographies alone influence reader perceptions. Read More

We explored whether the placement of the Behind the Story card on a news organization’s website affects readers’ recall of the card and trust in news. Read More

As part of the Civic Signals initiative, the Center for Media Engagement is releasing an excerpt from a series of reports aimed at achieving more public-friendly digital spaces. Read More

Knowing what readers want out of a story – or what they think newsrooms often fail to address – provides an opportunity to increase trust. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement wanted to find out if labeling news stories (using labels such as news, analysis, opinion, or sponsored content) increases trust. Read More

  Solutions journalism offers comprehensive coverage of an issue by proposing solutions rather than just focusing on the problem. The Center for Media Engagement set out to determine how certain components of solutions journalism affect the way readers evaluate both the reporting and the issue. We found that stories covering… Read More

In today’s highly competitive digital environment, it can be tempting to turn to clickbait news. But covering news that emphasizes outrageous behavior by political leaders might actually backfire. Read More

In our latest research, the Center for Media Engagement (CME) partnered with The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and StoryWorks to examine how theater and journalism can be combined to create a powerful message. Read More

The Center for Media Engagement’s new study aims to help news organizations build trust with their audiences. Read More

This research project was led by the News Co/Lab at Arizona State University in collaboration with the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin. Together, we designed and tested an online survey that three news organizations used to examine… Read More

Our research finds that audiences are more likely to click on links that use images in their layout, appear at the end of a page and reflect related content Read More

With funding from the American Press Institute, CME researchers tested different engagement methods aimed at prompting new subscribers in three different newsrooms. Read More

Our researchers surveyed 4,584 people in three U.S. news markets and found that people generally read national news more, but they perceived local news somewhat more favorably. Nearly 90% felt at least somewhat confident they could spot "fake news," but less than three-quarters of the people could correctly select fake headlines. Read More

With the help of a national newsroom, we conducted 118 experiments on Facebook to test the success of different headlines, images, and status updates on Facebook. Read More

After interviewing 75 female professional journalists, researchers found that online harassment is a pressing issue that requires immediate attention. Read More

Our researchers found that online political quizzes increase people’s interest in political news and make them feel more knowledgeable about politics. Read More

In partnership with The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), we are analyzing how attitudes change based on seeing a play. This is a progress report on our first effort. (photo: Leah Mahan) Read More

The Center for Media Engagement partnered with a local news organization, City Bureau, to explore attitudes towards, and preferences for, Chicago news media. Read More

The inclusion of Trust Indicators can result in higher opinions about the news organizations and journalists that use them, according to the Center for Media Engagement's research with the Trust Project. Read More

Redesigning a website's homepage could improve page views and time on page, according to a CME study that was conducted in conjunction with the launch of two news organizations' redesigned homepages. Read More

In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, we surveyed Snapchat users about their use of the app, specifically for news and politics. Read More

In the run-up to the 2016 general election, local news outlets focused less and less on coverage of issues, with coverage of corruption and scandal receiving more page views and social referrals. Read More

People who receive mobile news notifications more frequently visit the corresponding news applications. Read More

Do audiences engage more with news coverage of campaign strategy or issues? Read More

In response to a newspaper series on the issue of poverty, the public tweeted more about poverty. The discussion, however, lasted only a short period. Read More

Our survey of news editors and directors offers a glimpse at current newsroom practices. Read More

We tested whether headlines written using varying levels of uncertainty prompt different reactions. Read More

As news habits change, it's important to understand what is available for news audiences across various platforms. Read More

Solutions-oriented headlines yield a modest increase in clicks over non-solutions headlines, but other factors may also affect clicks. Read More

There are benefits to newsrooms using solutions-based journalism, but it is not a cure-all for audience engagement. Read More

Headlines are the marquees of news stories. These short statements located at the beginning of an article frame the information that is to follow. They encapsulate a portion of the story, presenting a snapshot of reality. The New York Times headlines an article as “Climate Change Will Disrupt Half of… Read More

There is a significant increase in page views and learning from articles when people browse a news website with a contemporary design compared to one with a classic, newsprint-style layout. Read More

Through six focus groups, we learned that people prefer in-person discussions about politics rather than those that take place online, and are concerned that political discussion might lead to conflict. Read More

We found that solutions-based reporting may be an effective journalistic tool that serves the needs of both audiences and news organizations, and that it has the potential to increase reader engagement. Read More

We examined 155 U.S. newspaper and television news websites to understand how they were using social media buttons, comment sections, online polls, lists of hyperlinks, and mobile version. Read More

Can hyperlinks be presented on a page in a way that prompts additional news use, as opposed to entertainment stories? And can hyperlinks be presented on a page in ways that encourage visitors to view editorial content from different political perspectives? Read More

Although polls can be engaging for site visitors, there are downsides. Quizzes help news audiences learn more in a fun and engaging way. Read More

What if, instead of clicking a “Like” button, one could click “Respect”? Read More