The tabloid effect

Who would have thought?! Guilty-pleasure online tabloids predict political outcomes where traditional broadsheets fail FIND OUT MORE BRILL (30 May 2024) In the run-up to both the Brexit referendum and to Trump’s US election win in 2016, online tabloid newspapers, including the UK’s Mail Online, the US’s Gawker and Poland’s Pudelek, accurately anticipated voting outcomes, whilst broadsheets failed to capture the public mood. Dr Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer’s analysis of over 2,000 online articles, and over two dozen interviews with tabloid journalists, reveals how the tabloid penchant for celebrity gossip, sensationalist copy and forthright political opinion, often dismissed as lowbrow and far removed from traditional political surveys and expert analyses, actually helped tabloids to engage and align with the views of the general public.