Christensen, Julia B. "The Impact of Media Supply on Bureaucratic Information Collection"
How do bureaucracies seek information? Bureaucrats rely on news media to navigate a complex information environment and make strategic decisions, yet the volume of news is overwhelming. Agencies, therefore, contract private firms to distill news into daily “briefings.” Drawing from government contracts, I describe how and why these briefings are produced. I then analyze briefings across U.S. executive agencies and find a systematic skew. Conservative news sources appear more often in briefings for conservative agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I then explore whether this skew reflects biased news selection or differences in underlying news supply. I show that, across agencies, news supply can explain the relationship between agency ideology and news slant. However, during Trump's second term, briefings shift in ways supply cannot explain. These findings reveal previously unidentified disparities in the bureaucratic information supply while recognizing that biased selection can arise under some conditions which warrant further investigation.
Working paper and appendix here. Invited to revise and resubmit at the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS). Winner of the Founder's Best Paper Award for the best paper in executive politics presented by a graduate student at APSA 2025.
Christensen, Julia B. "White House News Collection (1968-2025)"
This paper examines how presidents and their staffs have monitored, summarized, and circulated news inside the White House from the Nixon administration to the present. Drawing on a variety of primary sources and press accounts, I examine the evolution of White House media monitoring. Before 2001, each administration assigned an internal team to produce daily news summaries. These operations varied substantially. Beginning with George W. Bush, White House media monitoring was outsourced to Bulletin Intelligence. Subsequent administrations continued to hire the same company, which created greater continuity across administrations. Nevertheless, the content and format of the summaries continued to adapt to changing technologies, expanding media environments, and the needs of each administration. By reconstructing this institutional history, I shed light on a critical aspect of governance. In the face of an overwhelming volume of information, Presidents and their staffs rely on information-filtering institutions like the White House news summary. These systems determine which events, perspectives, and signals reach the White House. This paper provides historical context necessary for studying these processes and for understanding how media information reaches the White House.
Working paper and appendix here.
Christensen, Julia B. "The National Implications of Local News Decline"
The rise of the internet had a paradoxical effect on the influence of local news. The internet undercut advertising revenue while also making relatively obscure local papers visible outside of their local communities. Using daily news "clipbooks" produced for the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations, this paper reveals the value of local news to the White House and examines how the internet altered the supply of information to federal policymakers. Over time, the amount of local news in these clipbooks varies substantially. Local news collection drops sharply after each president wins reelection, suggesting that the value of local news is tied to electoral incentives. Technological developments also reshaped local news collection. After large-scale webscraping was implemented in 2001, the geographic diversity of local sources expanded sharply. However, following this initial spike, local news clips became increasingly less diverse and less frequent over the course of the 2000s and 2010s. By altering the flow of information to federal policymakers, the internet had an uneven effect on representation, benefiting some areas and groups and disadvantaging others. Taken together, these findings reveal the informational value of local news to national policymakers and demonstrate that the loss of local news has political consequences far beyond the local level.
Working paper available upon request. Examples of clipbooks available here. Presented at APSA 2026.
Beavers, David and Christensen, Julia B. "Spreading the News: News-Sharing by Members of Congress"
Which news sources do members of Congress (MCs) choose to share with their constituents? We examine this question using 191,358 congressional e-newsletters sent between 2010 and 2024. We identify 140,455 instances where news outlets were mentioned and classified over 6,000 unique news domains by geographic scope and partisan slant. We find that the news sources members share with their constituents vary systematically with their ideology and party. In future iterations of this paper, we plan to examine whether these patterns reflect strategic communication, credit claiming, members’ own media consumption, or their relationships with journalists and news organizations. We are presenting a draft of this paper at the 2026 APSA annual meeting.
Working paper available upon request. Presented at APSA 2026.
Christensen, Julia B. "Gatekeeping Bias in Local Media Coverage of Pedestrian and Cyclist Fatalities"
Last year, over a hundred thousand pedestrians were hit by cars in the United States and around eight thousand died. Decisions by local governments determine where and how often these deaths occur. While deaths often prompt cities to consider pedestrian improvements, responses vary widely and depend on whether politicians feel pressure from their constituents. This pressure is dependent on people learning about policy problems, which depends (in part) on the news media. Due to its critical role, we need to understand when and why the news chooses to feature pedestrian fatalities and other indicators of policy failure. When do journalists choose to feature a particular case? From prior research, we know that victim characteristics like race and gender can shape perceptions of newsworthiness in policy areas with strong racial and gender stereotypes. I find little evidence that these racial disparities persist when we look at coverage of pedestrian fatalities, although I do find that other victim characteristics like mode of transportation, gender, and age affect the likelihood of coverage. I also find some evidence that the hollowing-out of local news coverage has reduced coverage of pedestrian fatalities, but the effect is not consistent across papers.
Working paper available upon request. Presented at APSA 2024.
The President's Media Diet: White House News Consumption from Clinton to Obama. Research memo available here.
The Causes and Consequences of Asymmetric Coverage of US Agencies in Partisan News Media.
The Moderating Effect of Expertise: Assessing the Effects of Partisan Media Bias on Policy School Graduates.
(with Amber Boydstun)
Unequal funding: Direct payments by the federal government to news media.