Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News

Charles Angelucci and Andrea Prat

American Economic Review, 2024, vol. 114, issue 4, 887-925

Abstract: To investigate general patterns in news information in the United States, we combine a protocol for identifying major political news stories, 11 monthly surveys with 15,000 participants, and a model of news discernment. When confronted with a true and a fake news story, 47 percent of subjects confidently choose the true story, 3 percent confidently choose the fake story, and the remaining half are uncertain. Socioeconomic differences are associated with large variations in the probability of selecting the true news story. Partisan congruence between an individual and a news story matters, but its impact is up to an order of magnitude smaller.

JEL-codes: D72 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1257/aer.20211003

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