2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG
Key takeaways
- At the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, we are rebooting our free support program to assist local and national journalists in their coverage of election rumors in the 2024 cycle.
- Journalists can ask us a broad range of background, data and framing questions and be paired with one of our expert researchers to quickly get the answers you need.
- We can provide journalists with background context, data access and analysis, on-the-record expertise, and more.
- If you have a question, reach out to us via this Google Form to get started and see if we can help.
Building on a similar effort in 2020, we are reintroducing our action research program to assist local and national journalists as they navigate the complex landscape of rumors, misinformation, and conspiracy theories during the 2024 U.S. election period.
In the past, we’ve helped journalists answer data and contextual questions about election rumors at speed by pairing them with a researcher who specializes in the social media platform or context that they are investigating. In 2020, this resulted in 30 collaborations and 23 outputs (articles, radio segments, TV segments, podcasts). This year, we’ve refined our approach to, hopefully, help journalists get their questions answered in a more streamlined way. Our updated program will continue to deliver support through a knowledgeable team of data analysts, coders, and contextual experts.
This research program aims to understand how academic researchers and others can support journalists, especially local and/or under-resourced journalists, in reporting on fast-moving information spaces. As part of this program, we will ask you to consent to let us study your interactions and communication with our team. We may ask for a follow up interview after the election period about the experience of working with us and potential impacts on your investigation. Your name and organization will be anonymous in any academic outputs. We also use this as data for academic research papers into academic-journalist collaborations; you can read past published work here.
What kinds of questions can journalists ask for support with?
Whether you’re seeing data analytics, insights, or context on a trending topic our team is here to help. Below are a few examples of types of questions we’ve assisted with in the past, though we’re open to triaging others as needed.
1.) Questions about our research outputs
If you read something on our blog, our Substack newsletter, or through any of our social media feeds — we’re happy to answer any follow-up questions you might have or provide expert quotes for your own stories covering the same topics.
2.) Specific data questions
We can help with specific questions about the spread of a particular rumor across different platforms, give data-driven insights into what rumors are dominating the conversation, and help contextualize rumors within the current information environment.
Our 2024 election effort adapts innovative research methods — integrating qualitative, quantitative, digital ethnographic, visual, and generative AI approaches — for analyzing the spread of information across social media and other online platforms to the challenge of rapidly discovering, analyzing, and reporting on election-related rumors and disinformation campaigns. We can also provide data (when publicly available) and advise on data methods for more data-driven pieces.
3.) Context / background questions
We can help provide vital context on emergent rumors, answering questions around novelty— has this been seen before? If so, where, when, and who picked it up? We also help journalists understand the broader climate of election information, the key players and “news brokers,” and the history of rumoring in this space. Finally, we can offer academic insights to help understand, frame, and theorize the kinds of rumoring behaviors out there.
4.) Public education / framing questions
Need help framing an article pre-bunking a specific rumor? Worried about amplifying misleading information in your own coverage? We can help you think through ways to frame your article to clearly communicate about election rumors and provide insights into effective strategies and examples to use when “pre-bunking” or fact-checking emergent rumors.
How to get started
You can reach out to us by contacting using this Google Form and your question.
One of our researchers will reply to schedule a quick kick of call to discuss the specifics of your investigations, questions and relevant data that you already have.
If we think we can help, we’ll match you up with one of our expert research team who can continue to help you until your story is complete.
In the case that our team reaches capacity, we will prioritize local journalists and those with fewer internal resources.
PHOTO AT TOP: Photo by Marvin Meyer via Unsplash
