Do People Demand Fact-Checked News? Evidence from U.S. Democrats

Felix Chopra, Ingar K. Haaland and Christopher Roth

No 9405, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: In a large-scale online experiment with U.S. Democrats, we examine how the demand for a newsletter about an economic relief plan changes when the newsletter content is fact-checked. We first document an overall muted demand for fact-checking when the newsletter features stories from an ideologically aligned source, even though fact-checking increases the perceived accuracy of the newsletter. The average impact of fact-checking masks substantial heterogeneity by ideology: fact-checking reduces demand among Democrats with strong ideological views and increases demand among ideologically moderate Democrats. Furthermore, fact-checking increases demand among all Democrats when the newsletter features stories from an ideologically non-aligned source.

Keywords: fact-checking; news demand; information; media bias; belief polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D91 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Do people demand fact-checked news? Evidence from U.S. Democrats (2022)
Working Paper: Do People Demand Fact-Checked News? Evidence From U.S. Democrats (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9405

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