The Demand for Fact-Checking

Felix Chopra, Ingar Haaland and Christopher Roth
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Ingar Haaland: University of Bergen and CESifo

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using a large-scale online experiment with more than 8,000 U.S. respondents, we examine how the demand for a politics newsletter changes when the newsletter content is fact-checked. We first document an overall muted demand for factchecking 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: factchecking reduces demand among respondents with strong ideological views and increases demand among ideologically moderate respondents. Furthermore, factchecking increases demand among all respondents when the newsletter features stories from an ideologically non-aligned source

Keywords: Fact-checking; News Consumption; Information; Media Bias; Belief Polarization JEL Classification: D83; D91; L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... werp_1357_-_roth.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Demand for Fact-Checking (2021)
Working Paper: The Demand for Fact Checking (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1357

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