Intro
Approach All Sources Critically
Approach claims about candidates, both those made about them and those made about themselves, critically. It can be difficult to discern which media forms provide factual information, partisan opinions or interpretations of factual information, and even intentional misinformation. Two charts below can help you consider common forms of media and their biases as a starting point. But even these are not definitive and should be approached critically!
Some Questions to Ask About Candidates
- Where do they stand on issues you care about?
- If they have held office before, what has been their voting and attendance record?
- What other education, life or career experience do they bring to the table?
- How have their views and/or stances on issues changed over time?
- How do they handle fundraising for their campaign(s)?
- Which party do they belong to and how does their individual campaign compare to the party as a whole?
Media Bias
- Should you trust media bias charts?An article from The Poynter Institute interrogating the accuracy of media bias charts.
- MediaWise ProgramsThe Poynter Institute, a global nonprofit that strengthens democracy by improving standards for journalism, compiled programs and media literacy resources including: a Find Facts Fast text message course, a misinformation resilience toolkit, and other fact-checking tools.
- Complex or clickbait?: The problematic Media Bias ChartA blog article critical of the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart submitted to the ACRLog, blogging by and for academic and research librarians.
- What the ACRL Blog Critique Misses About the Media Bias Chart®A response to the ACRL blog article critical of the Media Bias Chart® written by its original creator, Vanessa Otero.
Bias Chart Examples
Version 12.0 of Media Bias Chart® Static Chart, non-commercial license for personal, education, non-profit, and civic use.
Interactive Version of Media Bias Chart®
View articles and references in the "Media Bias" section above to learn more about discussion and debate surrounding the use and accuracy of this tool.
AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ by AllSides.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. These ratings may be used for research or noncommercial purposes with attribution.
Authors' expressed use and benefits of this resource in approaching the question of media bias:
- Transparent methodology for creation with team of researchers and media experts
- Reviews only media bias of a particular publication or organization not media accuracy
- Clarifies that center does not necessarily mean equal "good" or "true" and right or left does not necessarily mean "wrong" or "unreasonable"
- Provides bias ratings for individual media groups along with rationale and evidence
Researching Candidates
Find an interactive map to select your state or select election coverage by office. Ballotpedia is a powerful tool to help you find out:
- Who the candidates running in various electoral offices are
- History and background about their career and views
- Current polling data in a particular political race
- Contact information when available including a direct link to their official campaign website
Encourage local campaign candidates to complete a Candidate Connection Survey to appear on Ballotpedia
Check your local electoral candidates' official campaign website and/or social media accounts for more details.
A nonpartisan organization dedicated to providing free, factual, unbiased information on candidates and elected officials in America. Some helpful tools to learn more about presidential candidates and track politicians' actions include:
- Search by politician's name to find their bio, votes on key legislation, positions, ratings, speeches, and funding
- View of Key Votes sorted by State, Issue, Year, and Chamber of government
- Search Public Statements made by various officials and/or candidates
Vote411 is a digital tool affiliated with The League of Women Voters intended to be a one-stop-shop for the electoral process, from registration, to research, to voting instructions. Their voters' guide tool offers general information based upon their direct communication(s) with candidates and their campaigns. Not all candidates have their information available through this guide, especially on the local level. You can also text or email your voting selections on a sample ballot to yourself after researching and making (optional) choices online.
- Search by your local address to see candidates on your ballot
- View voters' guides for all candidates sorted by state
- All guides contain answers to direct questions drafted by candidates and their campaign workers
Federal Election Commission: Public Records
The FEC's research guides provide public information filed by political candidates and committees, including:
- Candidates
- PACs, parties and other committees
- Campaign finance statistics
- FEC Reports on Financial Activity (Historical data from 1976-1994)
Searchable data repositories include but are not limited to:
The status of federal legislation, information about your representative and senators in Congress including voting records, and original research on legislation. You can create an account and track specific lists of bills, votes, legislators, or more with classes or communities.
- Get alerts on major legislative activity, upcoming legislation, new laws, and bill summaries
- Find individual Congressmembers' profiles with their placement on an ideology-leadership chart, committees they sit on, legislation they've enacted, bills they've sponsored, and voting records
- A database of legislator misconduct and alleged misconduct involving campaign & elections, ethics violations, bribery & corruption, sexual harassment & abuse, and other crimes, along with the consequences
- Search bills by keyword, subject area, or sponsor with other advanced search possibilities as well (note bills use legal terminology in place of everyday words)
Use this nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. You can search through campaign finance data to investigate the ties between candidates and officeholders and various individuals, industries, and other interest groups who may lobby their offices and/or campaigns with particular policy agendas. OpenSecrets also provides information and context around how money in politics and lobbying work in our electoral system. Search for your candidate(s) to get started.
- View broad overview of elections and how campaign financing impacts them across different variables
- Browse their Learning Center about the basics of the campaign finance landscape with both basic and academic resources
- Use the Get Local tool to find out about big political contributions in your state
- Find campaign contributions from industries, PACs, and personal finances of candidates
This site is the federal government's open data site, and aims to make government more open and accountable. The effectiveness of open-source government sites as a means to / for public accountability is the subject of critical scholarship and review. Still, hundreds of thousands of datasets are available for public use, analysis, and research. Datasets encompass all levels of governance including: federal, state, city, and county.
- Browse most viewed datasets to see the most commonly viewed: notable examples include electric vehicle population data, crime data, consumer prices, student loan debt, and public health related data
- Search for datasets by organization and/or sector(s) of government or agency
- Consult the user guide for more detailed information about searching for relevant datasets
Local Elections Research
Local Elections Research: State Bill Trackers
It can be difficult to find information about local election officials, and even more so about candidates. This list of tools and search strategies may help you navigate the void of thorough information about local elections, where you hold the most power to decide electoral outcomes and impact key governing decisions in your community.
- Bill and Committee Meeting Tracking Tools by StateEach state has a bill tracking service you can use to follow key legislation and/or representatives. You may need to provide information or register for an account on the system your state uses.
- State Legislature Website DirectoryCongress.gov map and directory to the legislative / governmental body for each state.
- Open StatesAn independently-run run project until 2021, Open States has since been adopted by Plural, creating software to make public policy data more discoverable. This is an open data / open education project to democratize knowledge of policy proposals and decisions.
Local Elections Research: Consult Local News
Try to Google the candidate you are interested in learning more about for interviews, press releases, or relevant stories about their political history and/or advocacy work prior to politics.
Tip: Search the candidate's name in quotes to return only results including their full name.
A Google search without Gregory Haddad's name (Mansfield's District 054 State Representative) returned 169,000 results.
The same search with Gregory Haddad's name in quotation marks returned only 1,270 results.
That's a 99% decrease in not necessarily relevant search results!
You can use this search strategy on almost any database or search engine platform. You could try searching on YouTube for local debates or press conferences using this strategy as well.
You can further narrow your search results using the site: search limiter.
If you are looking for information about a candidate in a specific news publication you can use that site's URL domain after site: to only search for instances where the candidate's full name is used on that particular website.
You can repeat this search with other local news sources as you wish. This one was specifically searching The Hartford Courant.
Without much effort, this search strategy managed to reduce your not necessarily relevant results by another 97%!
