bnyhan's Profile

New GEN: Will extremist shootings change gun politics?

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium: The weekend’s deadly massacres in El Paso and Dayton served as a grim reminder of past inaction on gun policy. Even posting the famous... Continue reading

Posted Aug 6, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New GEN: How Trump can erode democracy in defeat

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium: Does Donald Trump present a threat to American democracy, or is the system restraining him? As last week’s debate over the Census citizenship question... Continue reading

Posted Jul 15, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New GEN: 2020 polls are useless right now

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium: Do the polls really show Donald Trump is headed for big trouble in his reelection campaign? That’s what you might think from watching coverage... Continue reading

Posted Jun 19, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New GEN: AOC is right - give Congress a raise

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium: Late Monday night, the Democratic leadership in the House decided to delay a vote on a spending measure that would reinstate a cost-of-living adjustment... Continue reading

Posted Jun 12, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Trump as the arsonist firefighter

From my new column at Medium: One of Donald Trump's signature moves as president is to act as both arsonist and firefighter, taking credit for resolving pseudo-crises that he in fact initiated. The latest example came Friday, when Trump declared... Continue reading

Posted Jun 4, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Don't normalize election challenges

From my new column at Medium: The greatest danger of Donald Trump's presidency is that seemingly abnormal things become seen as normal. After more than 10,000 false or misleading claims, even the president's outrageous assertions that Democrats support the murder... Continue reading

Posted May 10, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Bright Line Watch report on US democracy

From our new report: Prior to the release of the Mueller report and subsequent escalation of conflict between the executive and legislative branches, Bright Line Watch conducted a new wave of surveys on the quality of democracy in the United... Continue reading

Posted May 10, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Beware redaction conspiracies

From my new column at Medium: As the political world anxiously awaits the release of Robert Mueller's report Thursday morning, much of the focus has been on what we won’t see. It's quite likely the version that's released to the... Continue reading

Posted Apr 17, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Why primaries need parties

From my new column at Medium: For anyone concerned about democratic norms and the rule of law, the 2016 election offered a clear lesson: Parties need to exercise more control over candidate selection. In this era of high partisanship, the... Continue reading

Posted Mar 28, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Evidence-based policy for social media

From my new column at Medium: Even now, more than two years after the 2016 election, the debate over the influence of social media on our political system still relies largely on scary anecdotes (Twitter's 50,000-plus impostor accounts are sowing... Continue reading

Posted Mar 8, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Upshot: Why vaccination laws matter most

From my new Upshot column: Social media companies face increasing scrutiny for amplifying fringe anti-vaccine sentiment amid measles outbreaks in several states like Washington. In response, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest recently made headlines by announcing initiatives to reduce vaccine misinformation... Continue reading

Posted Mar 6, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: A weak president can still be dangerous

From my new column at Medium: Just as physicists spend decades seeking to resolve the seeming paradox that a photon is both a wave and a particle, observers of U.S. politics continue to struggle with the reality that Donald Trump... Continue reading

Posted Feb 26, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: A politician's authenticity doesn't matter

From my new Medium column: With the 2020 presidential campaign officially underway, the worst excesses of political reporting are once again rearing their ugly heads — most notably, the media's preoccupation with candidates' authenticity, an obsession that has marred so many recent... Continue reading

Posted Feb 12, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: Why fears of fake news are overhyped

From my new column: After the shock of the 2016 presidential election, many Americans found psychological refuge in a simple explanation for why Donald Trump won: "fake news." False or misleading information published by dubious for-profit websites had spread widely... Continue reading

Posted Feb 5, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New report on fake news and misinformation in 2018

From my new report with Andy Guess, Ben Lyons, Jacob Montgomery, and Jason Reifler: Concern has grown since the 2016 presidential election about the prevalence of misinformation in American politics and the ways social media has potentially exacerbated its reach... Continue reading

Posted Feb 5, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New column: How technologists can counter misinfo

From my new column co-authored with Patrick Ball: Since "fake news" rose to prominence during and after the 2016 election, the United States and countries around the world have struggled to determine how to most effectively address political misinformation. Though... Continue reading

Posted Jan 30, 2019 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Bright Line Watch reports

We published two new reports today at Bright Line Watch: -Wave 7 Report - new expert and public ratings of the state of U.S. democracy in October 2018 -Party, policy, democracy and candidate choice in U.S. elections - a new... Continue reading

Posted Nov 15, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Medium: The Trump backlash on immigration

From my new column: Intweets and campaign rallies in recent days, President Trump has returned to his signature cause of immigration, inveighing against drug traffickers and a caravan of immigrants. Trump’s strategy makes perfect sense politically. He hopes to prod... Continue reading

Posted Oct 26, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Monkey Cage: Court legitimacy post-Kavanaugh

From my new Monkey Cage post on the potential consequences of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination for public attitudes toward the Supreme Court: Could Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination undermine the public standing of the Supreme Court? Observers such as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein... Continue reading

Posted Oct 11, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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Document Journal essay on information overload

My 2017 essay for Document Journal on information overload is now online: Critics of democracy have long lamented that people know too little about politics, but today we have more news and information available to us than at any moment... Continue reading

Posted Aug 29, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New Bright Line Watch report on U.S. democracy

The key results from our July expert and public surveys: American democracy is continuing to erode. Our expert respondents perceive a consistent, ongoing decline in the overall quality of American democracy from 2015 (assessed retrospectively) to our first expert survey... Continue reading

Posted Aug 1, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New report: Debunking "echo chamber" hype

From a new Knight Foundation report co-authored with Andrew Guess, Benjamin Lyons, and Jason Reifler: Is the expansion of media choice good for democracy? Not according to critics who decry "echo chambers," "filter bubbles," and "information cocoons" — the highly... Continue reading

Posted Feb 13, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New NYT: Persuasion effects of fake news overblown

From my new Upshot column: How easy is it to change people’s votes in an election? The answer, a growing number of studies conclude, is that most forms of political persuasion seem to have little effect at all. This conclusion... Continue reading

Posted Feb 13, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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New research on fake news consumption in 2016

My new research on fake news consumption with Andrew Guess and Jason Reifler: Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign Though some warnings about online “echo chambers” have been hyperbolic,... Continue reading

Posted Jan 2, 2018 at Brendan Nyhan

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"You're Fake News!" The Poynter Media Trust Survey

From a new report released yesterday (co-authored with Andy Guess and Jason Reifler): During the Trump presidency, the United States has witnessed unprecedented attacks on the press from the highest office in the land. It is essential to understand how... Continue reading

Posted Dec 6, 2017 at Brendan Nyhan

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