News Grazers

Book excerpt: How has growing media choice transformed the way we gather news? News Grazers: Media, Politics, and Trust in an Information Age offers students an integration of the emerging effects that cable news, online news, and social media have had on American politics. Author Richard Forgette, an expert on the U.S. Congress and public policy, draws on direct experimental research to argue that the diffusion of media outlets and media technologies has resulted in an increasingly fragmented and distracted news audience. This unprecedented level of media choice is not only altering who accesses the news and how they do it; more important, it is changing the news itself. With chapters on commentary news, partisan news, breaking news, and fake news, News Grazers gives students the tools they need to critically analyze the ever-shifting media landscape. Special attention is also paid to the effects of the media and political trust on the 2016 election.