As the presidential election approaches, the race is ramping up – including on social media. Although Meta reported in 2022 that only about 3% of the content on Facebook is political, Americans have already begun bracing themselves for a deluge of political news stories, ads, AI deepfakes and arguments on their feeds over the next few weeks.
Despite the tensions building on users’ digital feeds, an impending election doesn’t mean that people need to avoid social media altogether. When used wisely, social media can still be an important source for political information and an outlet to express opinions. I’ve studied how people navigate social media during elections, and I want to share three strategies to help you prepare your accounts for this election season so you can stay connected to what’s important without drowning in partisan back-and-forth.
1. Audit your feeds
While elections can be stressful, they also offer a chance to take ownership of the content that you consume online – or, as digital culture scholar Jessa Lingel says, “be your own algorithm.” Take the time to audit your social media ecosystem before November by considering the accounts that you follow and the settings that you have in place.
Social media platforms and their algorithms have inspired widespread concerns about their role in political polarization, because they enable people to isolate themselves in echo chambers that reinforce their own views. People with different political views can end up with substantially different material on their social media feeds.
While research suggests that echo chamber experiences are generally limited to highly partisan people, it is worthwhile to take a critical look at your feeds. Consider diversifying the content you see on social media, including following people whose life experiences differ from your own.
On the other side of the coin, take a breather before unfollowing people you disagree with during tense moments. While encountering political dissent online can be uncomfortable, studies demonstrate that deliberately blocking it out can contribute to polarization.
Platforms are taking steps behind the scenes, however, to limit users’ exposure to political content. For example, Meta recently implemented features that limit the amount of political content that users see on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Since earlier this year, the setting has been turned on by default. Now is a great time to double-check that your accounts’ settings reflect the content and ad personalization preferences that work best for you. If you want, you can turn the political content back on using the “content preferences” settings available through Facebook and Instagram.
2. Stay skeptical and practice stepping away
Misinformation on social media remains a constant concern during elections. This year, AI-generated images pose a particular misinformation threat, especially when they’re shared by the presidential candidates themselves.
The News Literacy Project has established a 2024 election misinformation dashboard that has already compiled over 600 examples of inaccurate viral content related to this election, which include items such as misleading memes, altered photos and videos, and out-of-context quotes.
It’s not enough to hope the platforms’ systems protect users. You should approach information about the election with a skeptical eye, especially when it sparks an emotional response from you.
One study found that people who had stronger emotional reactions to fake news headlines expressed greater intentions to comment, share or like items than those who were not emotionally moved to respond. Pay attention to your emotional reactions to the headlines and images you encounter on social media, and take time to step away, process and fact-check information using sources you know are reliable before sharing.
Especially during elections, ideals of “good citizenship” put pressure on people to stay informed about the latest political news. Social media can provide endless election updates, but just because the information is widely available doesn’t mean you need to engage with it all the time. It’s possible to stay informed while also staying in touch with the enjoyable aspects of social media, even when the election rises to the top of everyone’s minds.
Different platforms can serve different political functions, which could include helping you to set boundaries around political information. Just as you might choose to take a break from intense circumstances by taking a walk or calling a friend, you can also designate some social media spaces primarily for decompressing, while still engaging with political information on others.
This might mean joining a new platform or creating an alternative account on a platform that you already use. While people tend to turn to X, Reddit, TikTok and Facebook for politics, you can choose to curate some accounts with less focus on political content for times when you need an escape.
Regardless of how you choose to prepare your social media feeds for the election, keep in mind that feelings of stress around election time are normal. Many aspects of elections can feel out of control, but taking control of your social media feeds allows you to manage your political information diet for the better.
Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, the largest the agency has ever built for a planetary mission, will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Europa, an intriguing icy moon of Jupiter. The spacecraft’s launch period opens Thursday, Oct. 10.
Data from previous NASA missions has provided scientists with strong evidence that an enormous salty ocean lies underneath the frozen surface of the moon. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of the moon to gather data needed to determine whether there are places below its thick frozen crust that could support life.
Here are eight things to know about the mission:
1. Europa is one of the most promising places to look for currently habitable conditions beyond Earth.
There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy — may exist at Europa right now. This mission will gather the information scientists need to find out for sure. The moon may hold an internal ocean with twice the water of Earth’s oceans combined, and it may also host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface. If the mission determines that Europa is habitable, it would mean there may be more habitable worlds in our solar system and beyond than we have imagined.
2. The spacecraft will fly through one of the most punishing radiation environments in our solar system — second only to the Sun’s.
Jupiter is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. As the field spins, it captures and accelerates charged particles, creating radiation that can damage spacecraft. Mission engineers designed a spacecraft vault to shield sensitive electronics from radiation, and they plotted orbits that will limit the time Europa Clipper spends in most radiation-heavy areas around Jupiter.
3. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter, studying Europa while flying by the moon dozens of times.
The spacecraft will make looping orbits around Jupiter that bring it close to Europa for 49 science-dedicated flybys. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in Jupiter’s dangerous radiation zone near Europa before zipping back out. Two to three weeks later, it will repeat the process, making another flyby.
4. Europa Clipper features the most sophisticated suite of science instruments NASA has ever sent to the Jupiter system.
To determine if Europa is habitable, Europa Clipper must assess the moon’s interior, composition, and geology. The spacecraft carries nine science instruments and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. In order to obtain the best science during each flyby, all the science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass. Scientists will then layer the data together to paint a full picture of the moon.
5. With antennas and solar arrays fully deployed, Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
The spacecraft extends 100 feet (30.5 meters) from one end to the other and about 58 feet (17.6 meters) across. That’s bigger than a basketball court, thanks in large part to the solar arrays, which need to be huge so they can collect enough sunlight while near Jupiter to power the instruments, electronics, and other subsystems.
6. It’s a long journey to Jupiter.
Jupiter is on average some 480 million miles (about 770 million kilometers) from Earth; both planets are in motion, and a spacecraft can carry only a limited amount of fuel. Mission planners are sending Europa Clipper past Mars and then Earth, using the planets’ gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the spacecraft’s trek. After journeying about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) over 5½ years, the spacecraft will fire its engines to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
7. Institutions across the U.S. and Europe have contributed to Europa Clipper.
Currently, about a thousand people work on the mission, including more than 220 scientists from both the U.S. and Europe. Since the mission was officially approved in 2015, more than 4,000 people have contributed to Europa Clipper, including teams who work for contractors and subcontractors.
8. More than 2.6 million of us are riding along with the spacecraft, bringing greetings from one water world to another.
As part of a mission campaign called “Message in a Bottle,” the spacecraft is carrying a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, cosigned by millions of people from nearly every country in the world. Their names have been stenciled onto a microchip attached to a tantalum metal plate that seals the spacecraft’s electronics vault. The plate also features waveforms of people saying the word “water” in over 100 spoken languages.
More about Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology.
The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — An affordable housing project that has been controversial due to concerns about safety, location and traffic received a vote of support from the Lakeport City Council for a state grant application during a special Thursday night meeting.
The council met for just under an hour and a half to consider a request from City Manager Kevin Ingram to execute a 2018 Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery grant extension request letter to the California Department of Housing and Community Development on behalf of the Parkside apartments project.
Ingram also asked the council to approve reallocating $2,396,301 in grant funds from the Bevins senior apartments project to Parkside, which will be located next to Westside Community Park.
In the end, the council voted 3-1 to support Ingram’s request. The dissenter was Mayor Michael Froio, who has been consistent in his opposition to the project for reasons including the need for another point of access. As the project is currently designed, it would be accessed only by Charlie Jolin Way, the main road into Westside Community Park.
Councilmember Kim Costa had to recuse herself from the discussion because she and her husband own a home in the existing Parkside Subdivision; she noted the project would be located behind her house.
The grant funding is part of the effort to acquire the gap funding necessary to get the project into the building phase, which it will now have a year to do.
Ingram told Lake County News in a Thursday morning interview that he believes the project can start building in that one-year time frame if it has the necessary funding. He told the council the same during the Thursday evening meeting.
The council’s vote was an about face from action it took in response to another request for grant support from the developer, Peter Schellinger, at its May 21 meeting.
At that time, after hearing more opposition from neighbors, the council — in a decision that appeared to surprise city staff — voted 4-0 against supporting staff submitting an application to the California State Department of Housing and Community Development for funding under its Permanent Local Housing Allocation Program to support the project.
Ingram emphasized during the discussion that the project already has been approved and has the entitlements to move forward.
That’s because in November 2022, in a 3-1 vote — with Froio again the lone dissenter — the council approved the project, clearing the way for Schellinger to move forward with building a 64-unit apartment community in the project’s southern phase. A zone change ordinance for the project was given final approval on Dec. 6 of that year.
That’s just the first part of the project, which at full buildout will include 128 new apartment units and 48 cluster homes.
What’s changed since then is that Schellinger — who was not at Thursday’s meeting — has not been able to win the grant funding he’s pursued. Originally, the applicant was Schellinger’s company, Waterstone Residential, formed in 2019, the year after Ingram said Schellinger first pitched the project to the city.
Recently Schellinger has brought on a partner in the effort. The lead applicant is now Danco Communities, the same firm building affordable housing projects in the city of Clearlake.
While Schellinger wasn’t at the council meeting on Thursday evening, appearing instead to speak on behalf of Danco was Chris Westlake, a former deputy director of the California Housing and Community Development Department under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Westlake said Schellinger wasn’t able to be at the meeting.
Noting that in past meetings an access bridge — or emergency vehicle bridge — has been of particular concern, Westlake said they want to provide a full access vehicular bridge. The design of that bridge still needs to go through environmental review and city design review, but Westlake said they are committed to providing it, which they think will take care of a lot of circulation issues.
Westlake also spoke to the challenges they have had in the highly competitive grant funding rounds for the Parkside project.
When asked at Thursday’s meeting by Lake County News about ex parte contacts from the developer to council members, Brandon Disney and Stacey Mattina said they hadn’t been contacted. Froio said Schellinger had called him twice this week.
The history of the Parkside Subdivision
Schellinger Brothers — made up of Peter Schellinger’s father and uncle — received city approval for their 96-lot Parkside Subdivision in 2005.
The subdivision was supposed to be built out over three phases, the first of which consisted of 31 lots. Schellinger Brothers built 17 homes before progress stopped.
One of the original requirements of that subdivision was that its first phase would include development of Wrigley Street, which was set to extend from Westside Road and connect to Craig Avenue, requiring construction of a bridge over Forbes Creek in the area of 1297 Craig Ave., 1226 Wrigley St. and 1227 Wrigley St.
That was key because it would create a second access point for the subdivision.
In December 2008, Schellinger Brothers took a request to change that through-street and bridge to a cul-de-sac to the Lakeport Planning Commission.
City staff at the time said the Schellingers made the request because after the subdivision application was approved an elderberry tree — that the project’s biological assessment somehow missed — was found within the creek area where the bridge was supposed to have been built.
The valley elderberry longhorn beetle, listed as a threatened species, is found only in the elderberry, its host plant. However, the beetle — endemic to California’s Central Valley — is not known to range into most of Lake County, particularly the Lakeport area, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service map.
The commission voted down that December 2008 revision request, citing lack of documentation about the elderberry's impact on bridge construction.
Another factor in that vote was the commissioners’ concern about having the subdivision limited to a single entry at Westside Park Road.
The Schellingers appealed the commission’s decision to the City Council. The following month, January 2009, the council unanimously granted the Schellinger appeal, which removed the bridge as a requirement.
Ingram told Lake County News on Thursday that the elderberry bush in question did, indeed, exist, but there hadn’t been confirmation that any beetles were present.
“Bridges are expensive,” he said.
At the point of the council’s elimination of the bridge requirement, Lake County was well into the impacts of the Great Recession, which hit it later and longer than other areas, and the rest of the subdivision’s phases weren’t built.
In the meantime, the Schellingers left the existing homeowners in the lurch when it came to dealing with lighting and landscaping in the Parkside subdivision, Councilmember Kim Costa told Lake County News in a Wednesday interview.
Costa said that, in the original agreements, a homeowners association was supposed to be formed to help take care of lighting and landscaping. When the Schellingers walked off, “there was no fix for that,” and the agreements were no longer in force, Costa said.
With neither the city nor the developer responsible for that upkeep, Costa said the subdivision’s homeowners have been left in limbo. They’ve had to deal with weeds and hire cherry pickers to make repairs to lighting. Costa said the developers have never shown an interest in sorting out the situation.
As to the larger issue of safety that Costa and other Parkside residents have raised about the new development, she said both the developer and the city are downplaying their concerns. “It’s like living in some alternate reality.”
With the new Parkside apartments projects, the city similarly did not require a bridge over Forbes Creek. Staff reports for the council discussion in late 2022 showed that the city said it consulted with three separate fire chiefs over the life of the project and that all three had decided that an emergency vehicular access bridge across Forbes Creek wasn't necessary.
During meetings in November and December 2022, a majority of the council — Stacey Mattina, Kenny Parlet and George Spurr — voted to approve Parkside, while Froio voted against it, concerned about its location in a high fire zone and his belief that it didn’t conform to the spirit of the general plan.
At that time, Spurr said he decided to vote yes because this aspect of the project is a good starting point to see if it will turn out the way Schellinger is proposing.
“I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” Spurr said.
Concerns about higher density
City staff said that the purpose of the meeting was not to relitigate the project, as it had already been approved.
Instead, Ingram — who acknowledged that Parkside “is very controversial” — emphasized that it is nonetheless fully entitled and the developers could apply for building permits tomorrow.
He also pointed to new measures by the state Legislature that have chiseled away at the autonomy of local jurisdictions when it comes to approving affordable housing.
Not supporting such projects, he said, could result in punitive measures against the city. That includes being cut off from a major source of funding in the form of Community Development Block Grants.
Under the city’s zoning, if another developer took over, as many as 99 units could be built where Schellinger and Danco are proposing to build 64 units. Ingram said that, with new state density bonuses, that 99 units could be doubled and would be permitted by right and not subject to additional review by the city.
He said only the objective design standards the city was required to adopt two years ago gives them the last tool they have left for input on such projects.
Despite the fact that the project’s approval wasn’t up for discussion, several community members submitted letters or gave testimony during the meeting regarding their opposition, citing issues with fire safety, lack of an evacuation route and inadequate mitigations.
Ingram also was questioned about a city evacuation plan. He said there isn’t one, but that a countywide plan is underway.
Supervisor Michael Green, a former council member, said he was excited to hear about the proposal for a new bridge. He noted that the city had the grant funds to expend for the project because the county had played a role in getting them the money, adding that the county of Lake relies on trusted city partners to collectively address regional housing needs.
Green, who was appointed to the Board of Supervisors by Gov. Gavin Newsom, said he took Newsom’s statements on emphasizing support for housing seriously.
He added that a housing project will bring jobs, new residents and income. “When a city isn’t building it’s dying.”
Retired Lake County Undersheriff Chris Macedo, a resident in the Parkside Subdivision, related his concerns with inadequate ingress and egress in a high fire area that is prone to high winds which, he added, are not addressed in project plans. Additionally, the density is double the original subdivision plan, there will be between 1,000 and 1,500 vehicle trips a day on Charlie Jolin Way and safety concerns for children at Westside Park.
Retired Lakeport Fire Chief Jeff Thomas said he hoped the developer would consider defensible space, adding he is in favor of moving forward with the project if there is a bridge in place.
Parlet asked staff if anything could be done to stop a fully entitled project. City Attorney David Ruderman said the time periods for challenging the project have passed, and that the property owner has rights protected by law.
Parlet said he has heard that the developer hasn’t been mitigating issues related to lighting and vegetation for residents at Parkside.
“That’s an issue that needs to be dealt with in the future,” Parlet said. “If you’re going to do a project, you need to take care of it and you need to do it right.”
He added, “I think our path is clear.”
Disney said he believed the full vehicle access bridge would address a lot of residents’ concerns, adding that if the project died someone could come in and build more units.
Mattina said she felt there is a misconception about what the City Council can and cannot do, explaining property owners go through a huge process of which the council is not a part.
She said the council doesn’t get to say they like or don’t like projects. “I wish we had more power to do that,” she said. “That’s just not how it works.”
Mattina said it has been an uphill battle with the state, which has taken away all of the city’s power. “Extending the funding just makes sense.”
Froio said he was happy to hear about the plans for the bridge, but added, “That bridge Is not assured.”
Mattina asked where he was at on extending the grant, and Froio said he was a no vote.
Parlet moved to approve the grant extension which Disney seconded. They were joined by Mattina in voting in support of the motion, while Froio voted no.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The six candidates for this fall’s Lakeport City Council election fielded a variety of questions from community members during a forum this week.
The candidates met for the two-hour event in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall on the evening of Monday, Sept. 23.
Seeking seats on the council this fall are incumbents Kim Costa, Brandon Disney, Michael Froio and Kenny Parlet, and challengers Carl Porter and Christina Price.
Four council seats are on the ballot in November due to a former council member having resigned after being reelected but before taking office. That required an appointment until the next municipal election, which is in November.
Elizabeth Larson, editor and publisher of Lake County News, moderated the forum.
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