The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Non-Compliance with Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Andrey Simonov, Szymon Sacher, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé and Shirsho Biswas

No 27237, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We test for and measure the effects of cable news in the US on regional differences in compliance with recommendations by health experts to practice social distancing during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of Fox News viewership on stay-at-home behavior by using only the incremental local viewership due to the quasi-random assignment of channel positions in a local cable line-up. We find that a 10% increase in Fox News cable viewership (approximately 0:13 higher viewer rating points) leads to a 1.3 percentage point reduction in the propensity to stay at home. We find a persuasion rate of Fox News on non-compliance with stay-at-home behavior during the crisis of about 5:7% - 28:4% across our various social distancing metrics.

JEL-codes: D72 I12 I18 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH IO POL
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Working Paper: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Non-Compliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020)
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