Voluntary Exposure to Political Fact Checks

For political fact-checking enterprises to be effective, two conditions must be met. Voters must be interested in fact-checks, and the fact-checks must encourage voters to reevaluate their beliefs. Here, we study the former: whether voters are interested in reading fact-checks of political candidates’ statements. We use a simulated campaign environment in which participants’ exposure to fact-checks are voluntary. We find that voters are interested in fact-checking, especially for negative campaigns and personal (versus issue) campaigns. We also find that topics salient to voters are most often fact-checked. Finally, we provide evidence for the operation of a motivated reasoning process, as statements made by less preferred candidates were more deeply scrutinized.

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Partisanship, Political Support, and Information Processing Among President Rodrigo Duterte’s Supporters and Non-Supporters

Philippine Political Science Journal ◽

10.1163/2165025x-bja10006 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (1-2) ◽

pp. 73-105

Author(s):

Naomi B. Arata ◽

Ador R. Torneo ◽

Antonio P. Contreras

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Cognitive Processing ◽

Motivated Reasoning ◽

Political Support ◽

The Political ◽

Test Design ◽

Limited Impact ◽

Post Test ◽

Metro Manila ◽

Fact Checking

Abstract This study investigates whether partisanship influences the cognitive processing of statements made by President Rodrigo Duterte. It adopts a pre-test/post-test design and involves 254 college students from Metro Cebu and Metro Manila Philippines. Findings suggest that partisanship significantly influenced the cognitive processing of statements attributed to President Duterte. Political support was significantly and positively associated with belief. Supporters were more likely to express belief in attributed statements. Even when informed that the statements were false, their political support did not significantly decline. Non-supporters were less likely to believe attributed statements and more likely to change their minds when shown information that the statements were false. “Motivated reasoning” or “expressive responding” may explain these findings but there is not enough data in this study to establish this. The implication is that fact-checking may have a limited impact on changing the minds or diminishing the political support of the strongly partisan.

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Bad Government Can Be Good Politics: Political Reputation, Negative Campaigning, and Strategic Shirking

The B E Journal of Theoretical Economics ◽

10.2202/1935-1704.1580 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Deborah Fletcher ◽

Steven Slutsky

Keyword(s):

Election Outcome ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Political Candidates ◽

Negative Campaigning ◽

Second Stage ◽

Parameter Values ◽

Negative Campaigns

We develop a model of a contest between two political candidates who may care about their reputations separately from how they affect the election outcome. In the game's first stage, each candidate chooses to maintain his maximum reputation or to shirk to lower it. In the second stage, candidates undertake positive or negative campaigns. We allow the magnitudes of reputational effects of positive and negative campaigns, and the relative importance candidates place on reputation and winning, to vary. Under many parameter values, candidates shirk in order to either decrease negative campaigning in the second stage or to increase their probability of winning the election. This result persists even when some of the main assumptions of the model are relaxed.

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Asymmetric adjustment: Partisanship and correcting misinformation on Facebook

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/14614448211021720 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 146144482110217

Author(s):

Jay Jennings ◽

Natalie Jomini Stroud

Keyword(s):

Motivated Reasoning ◽

Asymmetric Adjustment ◽

News Stories ◽

Step Model ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Insight Into

Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual news stories and the fifth was misinformation. Both studies tested (a) the effect of misinformation without correction, (b) Facebook’s changes to its platform, and (c) an alternative we theorized could be more effective. The findings, in line with the two-step model of motivated reasoning, provide evidence of symmetric party effects for the belief in misinformation. In both studies, we find partisan differences in responses to fact checking. We find modest evidence that our improvements to Facebook’s attempts at correcting misinformation reduce misperceptions across partisan divides.

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Counting the Pinocchios: The effect of summary fact-checking data on perceived accuracy and favorability of politicians

Research & Politics ◽

10.1177/2053168019870351 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 205316801987035 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Alexander Agadjanian ◽

Nikita Bakhru ◽

Victoria Chi ◽

Devyn Greenberg ◽

Byrne Hollander ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Motivated Reasoning ◽

Comprehensive Assessment ◽

Elected Officials ◽

Public Officials ◽

Opposition Party ◽

Survey Experiments ◽

The Media ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Reputational Costs ◽

Over Time

Can the media effectively hold politicians accountable for making false claims? Journalistic fact-checking assesses the accuracy of individual public statements by public officials, but less is known about whether this process effectively imposes reputational costs on misinformation-prone politicians who repeatedly make false claims. This study therefore explores the effects of exposure to summaries of fact-check ratings, a new format that presents a more comprehensive assessment of politician statement accuracy over time. Across three survey experiments, we compared the effects of negative individual statement ratings and summary fact-checking data on favorability and perceived statement accuracy of two prominent elected officials. As predicted, summary fact-checking had a greater effect on politician perceptions than individual fact-checking. Notably, we did not observe the expected pattern of motivated reasoning: co-partisans were not consistently more resistant than supporters of the opposition party. Our findings suggest that summary fact-checking is particularly effective at holding politicians accountable for misstatements.

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Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.180593 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (12) ◽

pp. 180593 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Michael J. Aird ◽

Ullrich K. H. Ecker ◽

Briony Swire ◽

Adam J. Berinsky ◽

Stephan Lewandowsky

Keyword(s):

Motivated Reasoning ◽

The Political ◽

Donald Trump ◽

Null Effect ◽

Australian Sample ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Political Spectrum ◽

Voting Intentions

In the ‘post-truth era’, political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants' beliefs about those statements—regardless of whether participants supported Trump—but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. Therefore, the null effect of fact-checks on participants’ voting intentions and feelings may have arisen because of this artificially created balance. Moreover, Trump's statements were not contrasted with statements from an opposing politician, and Trump's perceived veracity was not measured. The present study ( N = 370) examined the issue further, manipulating the ratio of corrections to affirmations, and using Australian politicians (and Australian participants) from both sides of the political spectrum. We hypothesized that fact-checks would correct beliefs and that fact-checks would affect voters’ support (i.e. voting intentions, feelings and perceptions of veracity), but only when corrections outnumbered affirmations. Both hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a politician's veracity does sometimes matter to voters. The effects of fact-checking were similar on both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting little motivated reasoning in the processing of fact-checks.

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"I've said it before and I will say it again": Repeating statements made by Donald Trump increases perceived truthfulness for individuals across the political spectrum

10.31234/osf.io/9evzc ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Samuel Murray ◽

Matthew Stanley ◽

Jonathon McPhetres ◽

Gordon Pennycook ◽

Paul Seli

Keyword(s):

Motivated Reasoning ◽

The Political ◽

Political Affiliation ◽

Donald Trump ◽

Truth Effect ◽

Fact Checking ◽

Political Spectrum ◽

Illusory Truth Effect

Fact-checking organizations have reported that Donald Trump is prone to repeating patently false statements. Previous research has shown that repetition increases perceived truthfulness of even implausible statements (also known as the illusory truth effect). However, other research has shown that people may engage in motivated reasoning when interacting with someone from a different ideological group. We measured the effect of repeating statements made by Donald Trump on perceived truthfulness. Participants (N = 465) rated the truthfulness of different statements made by Donald Trump, some of which were repeated from an earlier phase of the experiment. Our results are striking. We observe an overall effect of repetition on perceived truthfulness that is equally robust regardless of political affiliation. Our results suggest that ideologically-motivated beliefs do not modulate the effect of repetition on perceived truthfulness of statements.

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Misinformation on the Facebook News Feed: Experimental Evidence

10.31219/osf.io/r3mvw ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ethan Porter ◽

Thomas J. Wood

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Experimental Evidence ◽

Real World ◽

Strong Evidence ◽

Motivated Reasoning ◽

Cognitive Effort ◽

Point Scale ◽

Media Companies ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Fact Checking

As concerns about the spread of misinformation have mounted, scholars have found that fact-checks can reduce the extent to which people believe misinformation. Whether this finding extends to social media is unclear. Social media is a high-choice environment in which the cognitive effort required to separate truth from fiction, individuals' penchant for select exposure, and motivated reasoning may render fact checks ineffective. Furthermore, large social media companies have not permitted external researchers to administer experiments on their platforms. To investigate whether fact-checking can rebut misinformation on social media, we administer two experiments using a novel platform designed to closely mimic Facebook's news feed. We observe factual corrections having powerful effects on factual beliefs (.62 on a 5-point scale, p < .001), with fact-checked subjects becoming substantially more accurate. Our results offer strong evidence that fact-checks can increase belief accuracy, even when tested on realistic simulations of real-world social media platforms.

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Sources, Channels and Strategies of Disinformation in the 2020 US Election: Social Networks, Traditional Media and Political Candidates

Journalism and Media ◽

10.3390/journalmedia2040036 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 605-624

Author(s):

Samia Benaissa Pedriza

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Social Networks ◽

The United States ◽

Traditional Media ◽

Political Candidates ◽

Presidential Candidates ◽

Electoral Campaign ◽

Different Types ◽

The Media ◽

Fact Checking

The dissemination of fake news during the conduct of an electoral campaign can significantly distort the process by which voters form their opinion on candidates and decide their vote. Cases of disinformation have been happening since the rise of social networks and the last presidential election held in 2020 in the United States was not an exception. The present research aims at analyzing the ways in which political disinformation is generated by different types of sources (social networks users, the media and political candidates) through various channels for communication (social and traditional media). Quantitative and qalitative methods were used to analyze a sample of news published during the election and verified by the most important fact-checking organizations in the United States and Europe. The results indicate that users of social networks spread false information on equal terms with presidential candidates, although the channel preferred to spread misleading messages was social networks in 67.4% of cases. The candidates relied on the use of classic disinformation strategies through traditional media, although the greatest degree of disinformation occurred when conspiratorial hoaxes were circulated through social networks.

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