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

43 Pages Posted: 20 May 2020 Last revised: 9 Apr 2023

See all articles by Charles Angelucci

Charles Angelucci

MIT Sloan

Andrea Prat

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Date Written: April 8th, 2023

Abstract

To investigate general patterns in news information in the U.S., 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% of subjects confidently choose the true story, 3% 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 too, but its impact is up to an order of magnitude smaller.

Keywords: media, inequalities, polarization, information

JEL Classification: L82, D72, D83, D90

Suggested Citation

Angelucci, Charles and Prat, Andrea, Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News (April 8th, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3593002 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3593002

Charles Angelucci (Contact Author)

MIT Sloan ( email )

100 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

Andrea Prat

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance ( email )

3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

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