Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Local news stations are often considered to be reliable sources of non-politicized information, particularly local concerns that residents care about.The Sinclair Broadcast group is a broadcasting company that has acquired many local news stations in the last decade.We investigate the effects of local news stations being acquired by Sinclair: how does coverage change?We analyze YouTube content put out by local news stations through topic modeling, log-odds ratios, and word embedding analyses to investigate changes after being acquired by Sinclair.We find evidence that local news stations report more frequently on national news at the expense of local topics, and that their coverage of polarizing national topics increases.These findings associate acquisition by Sinclair with increasing polarization and nationalization of news content, which in-turn risks increasing political polarization of local news viewers. * Equal contribution.
Authors: Miriam Wanner, Sophia Hager, Anjalie Field
Institution: Johns Hopkins University
Language: English
Topic: Media Influence and Politics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4415317966