The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting

Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan

No 12169, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Does media bias affect voting? We address this question by looking at the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of US towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gain 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News. The results are robust to town-level controls, district and county fixed effects, and alternative specifications. We also find a significant effect of Fox News on Senate vote share and on voter turnout. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican. We interpret the results in light of a simple model of voter learning about media bias and about politician quality. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for voters subject to non-rational persuasion.

JEL-codes: D0 H0 J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pbe
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published as DellaVigna, Stefano and Ethan Kaplan. “The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (August 2007): 1187-1234.

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Journal Article: The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting (2007)
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