ACT Reading — Social Science — Drill 2

SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the book Strangers in the Feed: Social Media and the Erosion of Local Identity by Jerome Whitfield (©2022). For most of American history, the primary sources of local news were institutions tightly bound to geography: the neighborhood newspaper, the community radio station, the local television affiliate. These outlets shaped not only what residents knew about their communities but how they thought about themselves as members of those communities. Shared knowledge of local events—a school board controversy, a new business opening on Main Street, a longtime resident's death—created a kind of social infrastructure, a set of common reference points that made civic conversation possible. That infrastructure has been significantly weakened over the past two decades. The same digital forces that expanded access to national and international information also undermined the economic foundation of local news. As advertising revenue migrated online, local newspapers closed or shrank; between 2005 and 2020, the United States lost more than a quarter of its local newspapers, and many of those that survived reduced their coverage substantially. What has filled the void is a mix of national media, algorithmically curated social media feeds, and informal neighborhood platforms like Nextdoor. Each of these has significant limitations as a substitute for professional local journalism. National media covers local events only when they rise to a threshold of national significance; most of what happens in a community never clears that bar. Social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement rather than civic relevance, which tends to amplify conflict and outrage over routine civic information. Neighborhood platforms carry hyperlocal information but lack editorial standards, and research has found them prone to misinformation and unverified claims. The consequences are not merely informational. Sociologists studying civic participation have found that communities with strong local news coverage tend to have higher voter turnout in local elections, more engagement in community organizations, and lower levels of political polarization at the local level. As local news weakens, these outcomes tend to deteriorate. Residents become less informed about local government, less likely to participate in it, and more likely to view their neighbors through the lens of national partisan conflict rather than shared community membership.