Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors leverage a large data set of gun deaths by police officers in the United States, combined with agency‐level policy data and community demographic data, to examine whether certain policies are associated with lower or higher rates of officer‐involved gun deaths. Findings show that one policy—the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people but do not fire—is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths.

Given that approximately half of Internet users use Facebook to access news, it is no surprise that social media are increasingly seen as a viable source of political information. Despite the fact that the average social media user only clicks on a small fraction of political content available in their News Feed, social media use correlates with political knowledge. From where, then, does this knowledge come? We argue that Facebook’s News Feed itself, with its short article previews, provides enough political information for learning to occur. However, this learning comes with an additional consequence: audiences who only read article previews think they know more than they actually do, especially individuals who are motivated to seek emotions. While we are agnostic to the normative implications of such overconfidence, it is worth noting that similar behaviors are associated with political efficacy, knowledge, and participation.

Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed about local policies and elections. We test our theory using an original data set that matches 11 local newspapers in California to the municipalities they cover. The data show that cities served by newspapers with relatively sharp declines in newsroom staffing had, on average, significantly reduced political competition in mayoral races. We also find suggestive evidence that lower staffing levels are associated with lower voter turnout.

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This study sought to theorize the crisis coverage gap, a new way of understanding the divide between public information needs and local digital news coverage during a crisis, through the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We used a three-wave panel survey of Americans (n ¼ 730) and analyses of local news posted on Facebook (n ¼ 2,632) at three points during the early pandemic to illustrate how the crisis coverage gap operates. Findings demonstrate a clear divide between the news the public wanted about the pandemic and what local media delivered on Facebook. Specifically, the media over-delivered economic and business news relative to public interest. It left the public wanting for news about how grocery stores were responding to the pandemic and for fact cheques ascertaining the truthfulness of information about the crisis. Earlier in the pandemic, coverage of schools' responses was in line with expectations based on how interested people were, but later they were over-covered, relative to interest.