News outlets are increasingly nationalizing their presentation of news stories, framing and presenting local news in a broad national context. We investigate how supply-side and curation-side factors of the news cycle contribute to the nationalization of news coverage. Through the computational analysis of 1.05 million Google news results on four days in July–August 2020, that corresponded to 1,581 news stories published on the George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, we examine the relationship between the nationalization of news coverage, stories’ search rank in Google News, and the geographic distance between the news event and the stories’ reading audience. Further, we explore the role of Google News in curating locally focused news. Our findings help to map the media ecosystem in a digital age, highlighting the influence of algorithmic power in politics and showing that excessive circulation of national news may have a profound negative impact on news diversity and social justice.
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