Beliefs About Political News in the Run-up to an Election 

20 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2024 Last revised: 14 Oct 2024

See all articles by Charles Angelucci

Charles Angelucci

MIT Sloan

Michel Gutmann

Northwestern University

Andrea Prat

Columbia University in the City of New York; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: July 15, 2024

Abstract

This paper analyzes survey data from news quizzes conducted during and outside the 2020 U.S. presidential election, using a model of news discernment to examine the development of partisan-driven parallel information universes. The effect of partisan congruence on news discernment intensifies significantly in the run-up to the election. Away from Election Day, when faced with a true and a fake news story and asked to select the true story, individuals are 7 percentage points more likely to choose the true story if it favors their party; in the days just before Election Day, this rises to 17 percentage points.

Keywords: media, elections, partisanship, information

JEL Classification: L82, D72, D83, D90

Suggested Citation

Angelucci, Charles and Gutmann, Michel and Prat, Andrea, Beliefs About Political News in the Run-up to an Election  (July 15, 2024). Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 4895656, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4895656 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4895656

Charles Angelucci (Contact Author)

MIT Sloan ( email )

100 Main Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

Michel Gutmann

Northwestern University ( email )

Andrea Prat

Columbia University in the City of New York ( email )

New York
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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