Welcome back UHP! Please join us for our first Food for Thought of 2018 with Professor Usher, on February 16th from 12-1 pm in the Club Room. Please RSVP here to save your seat and your lunch! More information about her topic is below.
The Beltway vs. The Heartland: Understanding Breakdowns of Trust in News
Dr. Usher’s talk will address a trope resonant throughout the post-2016 election: a beltway vs. heartland imaginary that positions coastal elites as out of touch with the rest of America. Her particular research intervention is to tackle the news production practices of journalists in the Beltway in order to understand how their creation of place in news contributes to the overall trust problem facing journalism. She’ll overview the theoretical connection between the social construction of knowledge and placemaking as it relates to trust in journalism. Then she’ll talk about two lines of the empirical research: findings from interviews with regional journalists in Washington who cover DC for their hometown papers as well as an early analysis that looks at the cultural capital of key beltway journalist influencers on social media.
