Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress: Evidence from 80,000 Congressional Inquiries

A vast literature debates the efficacy of descriptive representation in legislatures. Though studies argue it influences how communities are represented through constituency service, they are limited since legislators’ service activities are unobserved. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we collected 88,000 records of communication between members of the U.S. Congress and federal agencies during the 108th–113th Congresses. These legislative interventions allow us to examine members’ “follow‐through” with policy implementation. We find that women, racial/ethnic minorities, and veterans are more likely to work on behalf of constituents with whom they share identities. Including veterans offers leverage in understanding the role of political cleavages and shared experiences. Our findings suggest that shared experiences operate as a critical mechanism for representation, that a lack of political consensus is not necessary for substantive representation, and that the causal relationships identified by experimental work have observable implications in the daily work of Congress.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150606/1/ajps12443-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150606/2/ajps12443.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150606/3/ajps12443_am.pd

Revealing the news: How online news changes without you noticing

This paper describes an ongoing design project relating to online news and how alterations to news stories are hidden from the reader. As the delivery and consumption of news content online continues to overtake other channels in reader numbers and market penetration, so methods of transparency and reliability developed over centuries continue also to be tested by digital media. We have conducted content analysis on existing stories and examined how news organisations and channels handle rapidly evolving news stories. We have proceeded to develop low-fidelity prototypes and an interaction model to test our design approach. The outcomes are in production and will result in a digital artifact that reveals editorial changes to news items (the News Inspector). These changes will be made visible within the browser. The implications of the project relate to the wider question of news truth-telling, trust and online news credibility