Can Partisan News Shift Political Preference and Voting Behavior? An Experimental Evidence from Taiwan's General Elections 2016

Chun-Fang Chiang (), Semin Kim, SunTak Kim, Chien-Hsun Lin and Ming-Jen Lin
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Semin Kim: Yonsei Univ
SunTak Kim: National Taiwan Univ
Chien-Hsun Lin: Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
Ming-Jen Lin: National Taiwan Univ
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: 明仁 林

No 2019rwp-147, Working papers from Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment to investigate the elects of partisan news on the 2016 Taiwan Presidential and Legislative Elections. Sub- jects are divided into four groups: rightist (KMT), leftist (DPP), new third-party and control, and provided with distinct partisan news ar- ticles. To ensure readership of assigned newspapers, subjects join multiple experimental sessions in which they are asked to solve quiz questions about the news articles and rewarded according to their quiz scores. We measure the elects of partisan news by comparing the reported vote choices in the 2016 Elections with subjects' initial political preferences. We find that the leftist news articles have signif- icantly increased the support for the DPP candidate Tsai by reinforc- ing the existing preferences. The articles about the third-parties have changed subjects' voting intentions to support the new party GSD. We also find that the estimated baseline and reinforcement treatment elects are driven by undecided subjects or swing voters.

Keywords: partisan news; media e ect; swing voter; persuasion rate; voting; election; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 C93 D72 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
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