Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization
Gregory J. Martin,Ali Yurukoglu +1 more
TLDR
This article measured the persuasive effects of slanted news and tastes for like-minded news, exploiting cable channel positions as exogenous shifters of cable news viewership, and estimated that Fox News increases Republican vote shares by 0.3 points among viewers induced into watching 2.5 additional minutes per week by variation in position.Abstract:
We measure the persuasive effects of slanted news and tastes for like-minded news, exploiting cable channel positions as exogenous shifters of cable news viewership. Channel positions do not correlate with demographics that predict viewership and voting, nor with local satellite viewership. We estimate that Fox News increases Republican vote shares by 0.3 points among viewers induced into watching 2.5 additional minutes per week by variation in position. We then estimate a model of voters who select into watching slanted news, and whose ideologies evolve as a result. We use the model to assess the growth over time of Fox News influence, to quantitatively assess media-driven polarization, and to simulate alternative ideological slanting of news channels.read more
Citations
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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
Hunt Allcott,Matthew Gentzkow +1 more
TL;DR: The authors found that people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks, and that the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them.
Journal ArticleDOI
Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anton Gollwitzer,Cameron Martel,William J. Brady,Philip Pärnamets,Philip Pärnamets,Isaac G. Freedman,Eric D. Knowles,Jay J. Van Bavel,Jay J. Van Bavel +8 more
TL;DR: It is found that US counties that voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election exhibited 14% less physical distancing between March and May 2020, and partisan differences in distancing were associated with subsequently higher COVID-19 infection and fatality growth rates in pro-Trump counties.
ReportDOI
Misinformation During a Pandemic
TL;DR: This paper studied the extent to which misinformation broadcast on mass media at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, and found that areas with greater exposure to the show downplaying the threat of COVID-19 experienced a greater number of cases and deaths.
ReportDOI
Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization
TL;DR: The authors measured trends in affective polarization in nine OECD countries over the past four decades and found that the US experienced the largest increase in polarization over this period, while other countries experienced a smaller increase.
Journal ArticleDOI
Negative Partisanship: Why Americans Dislike Parties But Behave Like Rabid Partisans
TL;DR: The authors show that the psychological roots of negative partisanship are both widespread and, absent drastic individual and structural-level changes, likely to persist, and utilize the growing literature on personality and politics to show how the Big Five personality traits are predictive of negative partisan behavior.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting, and find that media bias affects voting in the U.S. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced i
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