Jay Jennings
Biographic Data
| ID | 3994556 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jay Jennings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jay |
| FAMILY NAME | Jennings |
| SIGNATURE | JENNINGS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5066-5519 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 150 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Ascribed Race and Interactions with Law Enforcement
Racial disparities in interactions with law enforcement are of critical concern. Yet data limitations hinder nuanced understanding of the role race plays in these encounters. This research note addresses the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring race in the context of law enforcement interaction, with a special focus on use of lethal force, emphasizing the importance of ascribed race—how individuals are perceived racially by other…
Policy agenda for radical reparations
Journalist Identity and Selective Exposure
Newsrooms are challenged with representing a diverse public, yet news staff are not always diverse themselves. Drawing from research on selective exposure along lines of race and ethnicity, this study explores how journalists' race or ethnicity affects an individual's likelihood of reading a news story and feelings of media representation. We find little evidence that different racial and ethnic groups respond differently to hearing and seeing by…
“Crisis Coverage Gap”
This study sought to theorize the crisis coverage gap, a new way of understanding the divide between public information needs and local digital news coverage during a crisis, through the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We used a three-wave panel survey of Americans (n = 730) and analyses of local news posted on Facebook (n = 2,632) at three points during the early pandemic to illustrate how the crisis coverage gap operates. Findings dem…
Asymmetric adjustment
Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual ne…
Inequality, Media Frames, and Public Support for Welfare
The political preferences of those with high and low incomes are highly correlated, and both groups become less supportive of redistributive spending as economic inequality increases. This article looks for a source of these interincome group correlations by examining trends in media coverage. We find that during periods of higher inequality, media coverage is more likely to focus on the personal characteristics of welfare recipients rather than …
Assistance that fades in improves learning better than assistance that fades out
Digital contagion
The effects of microtargeted digital advertisements intended to mobilize voters have the unique potential to spread within households through the sharing of devices. We conduct an analysis of cohabitants of individuals randomly assigned to receive microtargeted mobilization ads during a municipal election. Results show that digital ads generate a spillover effect, though the effect is moderated by district competitiveness. This contagion can occu…
Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog
Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed abou…
A little bit of knowledge
Given that approximately half of Internet users use Facebook to access news, it is no surprise that social media are increasingly seen as a viable source of political information. Despite the fact that the average social media user only clicks on a small fraction of political content available in their News Feed, social media use correlates with political knowledge. From where, then, does this knowledge come? We argue that Facebook’s News Feed it…
Mobilizing Millennial Voters with Targeted Internet Advertisements
Internet advertisements have come under tremendous scrutiny recently for their potential to impact electoral outcomes. However, academic research has yet to determine if they have an effect on turnout. This article presents the results of a preregistered field experiment conducted in Dallas, Texas, in partnership with The Dallas Morning News in which individually targeted banner ads were able to generate a statistically significant increase in tu…
Preventing the Use of Deadly Force
Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors lev…
Republicans Should Vote
Research has identified differences in partisan communication styles, cognitive processing, values, and cultures. This article assesses if there are also differences in how Democrats and Republicans conceive of electoral participation. We submitted 1,730 open-ended responses from a 2016 survey prompt soliciting thoughts and feelings about voting to computerized content analysis. Findings show that Republicans employed more confident and less nega…
Mixed Reactions
This article hypothesizes that religious motivation can explain varied responses to the political use of religious rhetoric. Religious motivation—religion’s place in an individual’s life—is an important determinant of individual behavior and attitude formation, and variation in religious motivation can explain why some religious citizens are attracted to candidates using religious appeals while others are clearly not. Using a survey experiment, t…
The Pennsylvania Policy Database Project
Temple University led a six-university effort that built a comprehensive public policy database for Pennsylvania, modeled on the national Policy Agendas Project created by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993). The Pennsylvania database (www.temple.edu/papolicy) enables users to integrate data from all three branches of government and the news media organized into 20 major and 249 minor policy topics since 1979. This article discusses the valu…
Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog
Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed abou…
Preventing the Use of Deadly Force
Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors lev…
Mobilizing Millennial Voters with Targeted Internet Advertisements
Internet advertisements have come under tremendous scrutiny recently for their potential to impact electoral outcomes. However, academic research has yet to determine if they have an effect on turnout. This article presents the results of a preregistered field experiment conducted in Dallas, Texas, in partnership with The Dallas Morning News in which individually targeted banner ads were able to generate a statistically significant increase in tu…
The Pennsylvania Policy Database Project
Temple University led a six-university effort that built a comprehensive public policy database for Pennsylvania, modeled on the national Policy Agendas Project created by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993). The Pennsylvania database (www.temple.edu/papolicy) enables users to integrate data from all three branches of government and the news media organized into 20 major and 249 minor policy topics since 1979. This article discusses the valu…
A little bit of knowledge
Given that approximately half of Internet users use Facebook to access news, it is no surprise that social media are increasingly seen as a viable source of political information. Despite the fact that the average social media user only clicks on a small fraction of political content available in their News Feed, social media use correlates with political knowledge. From where, then, does this knowledge come? We argue that Facebook’s News Feed it…
Inequality, Media Frames, and Public Support for Welfare
The political preferences of those with high and low incomes are highly correlated, and both groups become less supportive of redistributive spending as economic inequality increases. This article looks for a source of these interincome group correlations by examining trends in media coverage. We find that during periods of higher inequality, media coverage is more likely to focus on the personal characteristics of welfare recipients rather than …
Asymmetric adjustment
Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual ne…
Mixed Reactions
This article hypothesizes that religious motivation can explain varied responses to the political use of religious rhetoric. Religious motivation—religion’s place in an individual’s life—is an important determinant of individual behavior and attitude formation, and variation in religious motivation can explain why some religious citizens are attracted to candidates using religious appeals while others are clearly not. Using a survey experiment, t…
Digital contagion
The effects of microtargeted digital advertisements intended to mobilize voters have the unique potential to spread within households through the sharing of devices. We conduct an analysis of cohabitants of individuals randomly assigned to receive microtargeted mobilization ads during a municipal election. Results show that digital ads generate a spillover effect, though the effect is moderated by district competitiveness. This contagion can occu…
Policy agenda for radical reparations
The Pennsylvania Policy Database Project
Temple University led a six-university effort that built a comprehensive public policy database for Pennsylvania, modeled on the national Policy Agendas Project created by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (1993). The Pennsylvania database (www.temple.edu/papolicy) enables users to integrate data from all three branches of government and the news media organized into 20 major and 249 minor policy topics since 1979. This article discusses the valu…
Mixed Reactions
This article hypothesizes that religious motivation can explain varied responses to the political use of religious rhetoric. Religious motivation—religion’s place in an individual’s life—is an important determinant of individual behavior and attitude formation, and variation in religious motivation can explain why some religious citizens are attracted to candidates using religious appeals while others are clearly not. Using a survey experiment, t…
Preventing the Use of Deadly Force
Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors lev…
Republicans Should Vote
Research has identified differences in partisan communication styles, cognitive processing, values, and cultures. This article assesses if there are also differences in how Democrats and Republicans conceive of electoral participation. We submitted 1,730 open-ended responses from a 2016 survey prompt soliciting thoughts and feelings about voting to computerized content analysis. Findings show that Republicans employed more confident and less nega…
A little bit of knowledge
Given that approximately half of Internet users use Facebook to access news, it is no surprise that social media are increasingly seen as a viable source of political information. Despite the fact that the average social media user only clicks on a small fraction of political content available in their News Feed, social media use correlates with political knowledge. From where, then, does this knowledge come? We argue that Facebook’s News Feed it…
Mobilizing Millennial Voters with Targeted Internet Advertisements
Internet advertisements have come under tremendous scrutiny recently for their potential to impact electoral outcomes. However, academic research has yet to determine if they have an effect on turnout. This article presents the results of a preregistered field experiment conducted in Dallas, Texas, in partnership with The Dallas Morning News in which individually targeted banner ads were able to generate a statistically significant increase in tu…
Assistance that fades in improves learning better than assistance that fades out
Digital contagion
The effects of microtargeted digital advertisements intended to mobilize voters have the unique potential to spread within households through the sharing of devices. We conduct an analysis of cohabitants of individuals randomly assigned to receive microtargeted mobilization ads during a municipal election. Results show that digital ads generate a spillover effect, though the effect is moderated by district competitiveness. This contagion can occu…
Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog
Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed abou…
Asymmetric adjustment
Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual ne…
Inequality, Media Frames, and Public Support for Welfare
The political preferences of those with high and low incomes are highly correlated, and both groups become less supportive of redistributive spending as economic inequality increases. This article looks for a source of these interincome group correlations by examining trends in media coverage. We find that during periods of higher inequality, media coverage is more likely to focus on the personal characteristics of welfare recipients rather than …
“Crisis Coverage Gap”
This study sought to theorize the crisis coverage gap, a new way of understanding the divide between public information needs and local digital news coverage during a crisis, through the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We used a three-wave panel survey of Americans (n = 730) and analyses of local news posted on Facebook (n = 2,632) at three points during the early pandemic to illustrate how the crisis coverage gap operates. Findings dem…
Journalist Identity and Selective Exposure
Newsrooms are challenged with representing a diverse public, yet news staff are not always diverse themselves. Drawing from research on selective exposure along lines of race and ethnicity, this study explores how journalists' race or ethnicity affects an individual's likelihood of reading a news story and feelings of media representation. We find little evidence that different racial and ethnic groups respond differently to hearing and seeing by…
Policy agenda for radical reparations
Ascribed Race and Interactions with Law Enforcement
Racial disparities in interactions with law enforcement are of critical concern. Yet data limitations hinder nuanced understanding of the role race plays in these encounters. This research note addresses the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring race in the context of law enforcement interaction, with a special focus on use of lethal force, emphasizing the importance of ascribed race—how individuals are perceived racially by other…
Political science (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (6 works) · Social Media and Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)