By: Cameron Green

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (UATV) — The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute held a convening in Fayetteville on April 16th to brainstorm ways with attendees for the public to reconnect with journalism. The state of Arkansas ranks near the bottom in many measures of civic engagement. This includes voting, voter registration as well as voter turnout. Because of these statistics, the Winthrop Rockefeller Center institute spent 18 months searching for the reasons why.

Although there may be multiple contributing factors as to why citizens in the state are not voting, one of the common answers they heard were because of the lack of local news in smaller towns.

“There’s fewer and fewer sources of local news and information that are really quality journalism sources.” Said Janet Harris, CEO of The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute. “What a lot of people end up doing is going to Facebook to try to find information and as we know that can sometimes be very unreliable.”

She also said that there is now a 62% distrust in the media, but also that it is more towards the national media rather than local. Because many of the small town newspapers are being shut down, their options of finding local news are becoming more limited.

University of Arkansas student, Miceala Morano experienced the effects of losing a local newspaper in her home town south of Fayetteville.

“It really showed what was going on in our community, it was a close knit community.” Morano said. “I saw the way that people communicated with others changed.”

According to the 2023 Civic Health Index, Arkansas was last in political participation across all states. 62% of eligible citizens were registered to vote in the state which was 10.7% lower than the United States average for the 2020 election. Of those registered voters in Arkansas, 54% voted compared to the national average which was 72.7%.