Higher Seminar in Economics | Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News
Welcome to Higher Seminar in Economics organised by the Department of Economics, SSE. The seminar speaker is Andrea Prat, Columbia University.
Andrea Prat is the Richard Paul Richman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Columbia University. Andrea's research interests are in organizational economics and political economy.
About the speaker
Andrea is going to present “Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News” (joint with Charles Angelucci).
Abstract
Are voters able to distinguish real news from fake news? We develop a methodology that combines a protocol for identifying major mainstream real news stories, a quiz administered to survey participants, and the structural estimation of a model that disentangles individual information levels from news story salience. We focus on news about US domestic politics in a monthly sample of 1,000 US voters repeated 8 times. On average, 59% of individuals confidently identify the major real news story of the month, 39% are uncertain, and 3% confidently identify it as false. Also, 12% of individuals believe fake news stories. While partisan congruence affects whether an individual believes a specific news story, socioeconomic characteristics play a larger role in determining information precision. Our results indicate that the starkest pattern about the ability of voters to identify major news stories is not the generalized death of truth or its ideological polarization but rather its unequal distribution along socioeconomic lines.
This is an online seminar which will take place via Zoom. The link to the seminar will be distrubted by invitation only. Please contact lyudmila.vafaeva@hhs.se if you would like to attend the seminar.