The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
The 2026 Goldsmith Academic Book Award honors Eunji Kim, a political scientist at Columbia University, for The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy. Kim’s book tackles a central paradox of contemporary American life: even as income inequality rises and social mobility declines, large numbers of Americans continue to believe fervently in the “American Dream.” Drawing on innovative research, Kim argues that some of the most powerful stories sustaining this belief are not found in editorials or political speeches, but in “success-oriented” entertainment such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and America’s Got Talent. These programs function as modern Horatio Alger tales, repeatedly dramatizing the idea that grit and talent alone separate winners from losers, that structural barriers can be overcome, and that the system is fundamentally fair because ordinary people really do “win big.” Kim shows that exposure to these rags-to-riches narratives strengthens viewers’ faith in upward mobility and, in turn, increases their acceptance of economic inequality and weakens support for the social safety net. The American Mirage offers a compelling and unsettling account of how popular culture shapes political beliefs, making it a distinguished contribution to our understanding of media, democracy, and inequality.
Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It
Adam Berinsky, an MIT political scientist, tackles the challenge of political rumors – the factually incorrect claims, such as Obama’s birth abroad, that come to be widely believed. He explores why such rumors persist, who believes them, and how to combat them, using original survey and experimental data. He identifies conspiratorial thinking and strong partisan loyalties as key factors in the dissemination of such claims while suggesting remedial efforts should target not only diehard believers but also those who might be tempted to accept them. Emphasizing public vulnerability to misinformation, Berinsky calls for attention to both the message and the messenger, advocating for credible sources to debunk falsehoods.
Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence
News Hole: The Demise of Local Journalism and Political Engagement
The decline of local newspapers is a familiar story. Hundreds of them have shut down, with the loss of thousands of jobs. But News Hole shows that the problem is more than one of locked doors and laid off workers – when a local paper goes, so does the community’s civic health. Lower turnout in local elections, less responsive local officials, less civic engagement, wider polarization, less social trust, weaker community ties, less awareness of what’s going on a City Hall, the school board, and the county commission – in short, when a newspaper goes out of business, the community stops acting like a community. Danny Hayes, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, and Jennifer L. Lawless, Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Politics and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia, aided by dozens of student research assistants, analyzed fifteen years of reporting in more than 200 local newspapers, while also studying election returns, opinion surveys, and other indicators to track community engagement to show that without solid journalism, democracy itself is at risk.
Choosing the Future: Technology and Opportunity in Communities
Digital information drives participation in politics, the economy, and society. Yet great disparities exist as to which communities have access to the internet. In 2017, only half of residents of formerly industrial Flint, Michigan, had broadband or satellite internet at home, while over 90 percent of those in thriving Sunnyvale, California, in Silicon Valley, were connected. More recently, Covid-19 laid bare these persistent digital divides in both urban and rural communities, illustrating that broadband use is a fundamental resource for the future of opportunity in communities.
While previous studies have examined the impacts of broadband infrastructure, they have indicated little about the extent to which local populations can afford and use the technology. Moreover, there has been limited scientific evidence on how broadband adoption matters for collective benefits. Including new data on broadband subscriptions from 2000-2017, and comprehensive analysis for U.S. states, counties, metros, cities, and neighborhoods, Choosing the Future argues that broadband use in the population is a form of digital human capital that benefits communities as well as individuals.
Broadband has a causal impact across all types of communities–for economic prosperity, growth, income, employment, and policy innovation. Yet there are urban neighborhoods and rural counties where as little as one-quarter of the population has a broadband subscription, even when mobile is included. As we build “smart” cities and communities, as economies and jobs continue to experience rapid change, and as more information and services migrate online, it is communities with widespread broadband use that will be best positioned for inclusive innovation, with the digital human capital to thrive.
Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda
Manipulating the Masses tells the story of an enduring threat to American democracy that arose out of World War I: the establishment of pervasive, systematic propaganda as an instrument of the state. During the Great War, the federal government exercised unprecedented power to shape the views and attitudes of American citizens. Its agent for this was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established by President Woodrow Wilson one week after the United States entered the war in April 1917.
Driven by its fiery chief, George Creel, the CPI established a national newspaper, cranked out press releases, and interfaced with the press at all hours of the day. It spread the Wilson administration’s messages through articles, cartoons, books, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines; through feature films and volunteer Four Minute Men who spoke during intermission; through posters plastered on buildings and along highways; and through pamphlets distributed by the millions. It enlisted the nation’s leading progressive journalists, advertising executives, and artists. It harnessed American universities and their professors to create propaganda and add legitimacy to its mission.
Even as Creel insisted that the CPI was a conduit for reliable, fact-based information, the office regularly sanitized news, distorted facts, and played on emotions. Creel extolled transparency but established front organizations. Overseas, the CPI secretly subsidized news organs and bribed journalists. At home, it challenged the loyalty of those who occasionally questioned its tactics. Working closely with federal intelligence agencies eager to sniff out subversives and stifle dissent, the CPI was an accomplice to the Wilson administration’s trampling of civil liberties.
John Maxwell Hamilton, a longtime journalist, author and public servant, is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication; a global scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington, D.C.
Hamilton’s most recent book (2020) is “Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda.” His previous book, “Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting,” won the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy, the Book of the Year Award from the American Journalism Historians Association and the Tankard Award from the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He is editor of the LSU Press book series, “From Our Own Correspondent.”
Hamilton received the Freedom Forum’s Administrator of the Year Award in 2003. Other honors include two Green Eyeshade Excellence in Journalism Awards, the Byline Award from Marquette University and an MLK Day diversity award from LSU. He has received funding from the Carnegie and Ford foundations, among others. In 2002, he was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize jurist. He is a member of the Metropolitan Club of Washington. Hamilton earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Marquette and Boston universities, respectively, and a doctorate in American Civilization from George Washington University.
Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall
Margaret Roberts demonstrates that even censorship that is easy to circumvent can still be enormously effective. Taking advantage of digital data harvested from the Chinese Internet and leaks from China’s Propaganda Department, this book sheds light on how and when censorship influences the Chinese public.
The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy
Hindman explains why the internet is not the postindustrial technology that has been sold to the public, how it has become mathematically impossible for grad students in a garage to beat Google, and why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open internet. He also explains why the challenges for local digital news outlets and other small players are worse than they appear and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience and stay alive in today’s online economy.
Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism
Hamilton chronicles a record of investigative journalism’s real-world impact, showing how a single dollar invested in a story can generate hundreds of dollars in social benefits.
Political Journalism in Comparative Perspective
Based on interviews with journalists, a systematic content analysis of political news, and panel survey data in different countries, this book tests how different systems and media-politics relations condition the contents of political news.
