The Effects of High‐Information Environments on Legislative Behavior in the US House of Representatives

Abstract

I show in this article how changes in the information environment have contributed to the nationalization of legislative behavior. Access to technologies like broadband have eroded local news media resources and led to a more partisan electorate. As such, increased connectivity causes legislators to prioritize national interests over the interests of their constituencies, behavior that is traditionally seen as an electoral liability. I use data on the rollout of broadband to relate changes in the information environment faced by legislators due to the 2002 redistricting to their behavior. I find that legislators who faced more informationally connected environments post‐redistricting voted more in line with their parties, the president, and aligned interest groups. The results are robust to a specification examining within‐member changes in the 108th–111th Congresses. Taken together, these results provide strong evidence that a major contributor to the increasing nationalization of politics is the expansion of access to information.

Campaigning Through Cable: Examining the Relationship Between Cable News Appearances and House Candidate Fundraising

“…Past work has considered the role of media and money in the electoral process (Brown et al, 1995;P. Francia et al, 2003;Herrnson et al, 2019;Jacobson, 1978Jacobson, , 1989Jacobson & Carson, 2019;Limbocker & You, 2020) with some recent work showing the electorate (Trussler, 2021) and members (Trussler, 2022) changing their behavior as they are exposed to media. While all these works take different angles at attacking the question, the central theme born out of the results is that candidates view media as a vehicle for messaging and need monetary resources for purchasing that time from media outlets.…”

“…Money in congressional elections is increasingly coming from residents outside the candidate’s district (Gimpel et al, 2006; Gimpel et al, 2008). Moreover, this money can shape subsequent behaviors of members once elected (Barber, 2016; Trussler, 2022). So, if voters are increasingly paying attention to national news, gaining attention on the national stage by appearing on national programs may be beneficial for congressional candidates.…”

“…Cable news, rather as the driver of this trend or the natural offshoot of the underlying mechanism, is a component part of the nationalization of American politics (Trussler, 2021) and can even change legislators behavior in Congress (Trussler, 2022). With the growing role of cable news in American political discourse, it is unsurprising to see officials holding federal office appear with regularity on these networks (see Figure A6 in our Appendix for just how much this trend has increased).…”

Information and Policy Innovation in U.S. States

“…Citizens and elites can also be exposed to different policy changes through exposure on social media or other platforms and are more aware of what states across the country are doing than ever before (Hopkins 2018). This nationalized information environment should affect both voter and elite considerations away from local considerations and toward national issues (Trussler 2019), which is expected to reduce the role of neighboring state adoptions (Mallinson 2021; Mooney 2001). The growth of broadband has not only nationalized the information environment but made it easier for interests to disseminate information across large distances, and dramatically reduced the costs of forming advocacy groups on a national scale.…”