The effect of big-city news on rural America during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Can "urban-centric" local television news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic affect the behavior of rural residents with lived experiences so different from their "local" news coverage? Leveraging quasi-random geographic variation in media markets for 771 matched rural counties, we show that rural residents are more likely to practice social distancing if they live in a media market that is more impacted by COVID-19. Individual-level survey responses from residents of these counties confirm county-level behavioral differences and help attribute the differences we identify to differences in local television news coverage-self-reported differences only exist among respondents who prefer watching local news, and there are no differences in media usage or consumption across media markets. Although important for showing the ability of local television news to affect behavior despite urban-rural differences, the media-related effects we identify are at most half the size of the differences related to partisan differences.