Measuring the impact of the media

Political Science The active participation of the people is one of the central components of a functioning democracy. King et al. performed a real-world randomized experiment in the United States to understand the causal effect of news stories on increasing public discussion of a specific topic (see the Policy Forum by Gentzkow). Social media posts increased by almost 20% the first day after the publication of news stories on a wide range of topics. Furthermore, the posts were relatively evenly distributed across political affiliation, gender, and region of the United States. Science , this issue p. [776][1]; see also p. [726][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aao1100 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aar2579