Media Slant and Public Policy Views

Milena Djourelova, Ruben Durante, Elliot Motte and Eleonora Patacchini

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2024, vol. 114, 684-89

Abstract: We study how exposure to partisan news channels (Fox News and MSNBC) affects individual views on four policy issues: climate change, gun rights, abortion, and immigration. First, using GPT to annotate news transcripts, we document large differences in the way the two networks cover these issues. Second, exploiting exogenous variation in viewership due to channels' positions in cable lineups, we show that exposure to Fox News (MSNBC) is associated with more conservative (progressive) views, even when controlling for self-reported ideology and party affiliation. Our findings indicate that partisan media contribute to the rise of political polarization in the United States.

JEL-codes: D72 D91 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241005 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E198941V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241005.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20241005.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:apandp:v:114:y:2024:p:684-89

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20241005

Access Statistics for this article

AEA Papers and Proceedings is currently edited by William Johnson and Kelly Markel

More articles in AEA Papers and Proceedings from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().