How relevant is information? Some experimental evidence

Pedro Hemsley (), Marcio Firmo () and Vitor Onuki ()
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Pedro Hemsley: UFRJ
Marcio Firmo: PUC-Rio
Vitor Onuki: UFRJ

Economics Bulletin, 2023, vol. 43, issue 4, 1741 - 1748

Abstract: This paper examines the role of information from expert sources in opinion formation. While fact checking with experts has been widely adopted as a tool to fight fake news, it remains unclear whether people actually use such information to form their opinions, given that opinion formation may be influenced by a variety of factors. To investigate this, we conducted online experiments on three topics (gun violence, global warming, and Covid-19) to measure the impact of information from experts on opinion formation. Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group, with the former receiving objective information from expert sources about the topic and the latter receiving none. Results indicate that objective information had a non-significant impact on opinion formation across all topics, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of using it to counter fake news. Additionally, we find a strong correlation between political position and opinion formation.

Keywords: Objective information; trust in experts; fact checking; opinion formation; fake news (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12-30
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