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Distrust of fact-checking is not restricted to the right<\/p>\n
Even fact-checkers are viewed through partisan lenses.<\/p>\n
By\u00a0David C. Barker,\u00a0Kim L. Nalder, and\u00a0Danielle Joesten Martin\u00a0\u00a0Jul 3, 2017, 11:30am EDT<\/p>\n
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This story is part of a group of stories called<\/p>\n
This post is part of\u00a0Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system.<\/p>\n
What to do about the\u00a0\u201cpost-truth\u201d\u00a0era in American politics? Many have hoped that beefed-up fact-checking by reputable nonpartisan organizations (e.g.,\u00a0Fact Checker, PolitiFact,\u00a0FactCheck.org,\u00a0Snopes) would equip citizens with a tool to help them identify lies, thereby reducing politicians\u2019 incentive to do so.<\/p>\n
Putting aside questions about the consistency of their\u00a0methods, does fact-checking work? As mass polarization deepens and media sources continue to balkanize, citizens who see bias in the traditional purveyors of information (mainstream media, academia, etc.) may often\u00a0dismiss fact-checkers\u00a0as similarly biased. And even when fact-checking succeeds at correcting misperceptions, it may not reduce supporters\u2019 embrace of the\u00a0liar. Such behavior would be consistent with social psychologists\u2019 understanding of\u00a0motivated reasoning.<\/p>\n
One might guess that such imperviousness to professional fact-checking would be more or less exclusive to Republicans. After all, their longstanding distrust of media and academia is well known. However, as was on full display in social media last year and at the Democratic National Convention, insurgent progressives may have little more faith in \u201cthe establishment\u201d these days than do the most ardent Trumpists.<\/p>\n
Rejection of fact-checking from either the right or left might be most pronounced when its conclusions shed positive light on the insurgents\u2019 pet boogeymen (or women). Enter Hillary Rodham Clinton, that rarest of politicos who was, in May 2016 at least, the preferred target of both red and blue anti-establishment guerrillas.<\/p>\n
Taking advantage of these circumstances, in May of last year, just a couple of weeks before the California Democratic primary, we administered a randomized experiment to a representative sample of Californians using Sacramento State University\u2019s\u00a0CALSPEAKS\u00a0panel (n=622). After measuring party identification and primary vote intention, we prompted all respondents with the statement below:<\/p>\n
\u201cNonpartisan fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact rate controversial candidate statements for truthfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n
We also exposed one randomized half of the sample to the following statement and image:<\/p>\n
\u201cEach presidential candidate’s current PolitiFact average truthfulness score is placed on the scale below.\u201d<\/p>\n
Respondents\u2019 mean evaluation of candidates\u2019 truthfulness.\u00a0Graphic created by authors<\/p>\n
We created this visual by placing PolitiFact ratings as of May 2016 on a point scale and averaging them for each candidate. The image validated the growing mainstream narrative about Donald Trump\u2019s disdain for facts, as well as Bernie Sanders\u2019s tell-it-like-it-is reputation. But most notably, it contradicted conventional wisdom in many circles on both the left and right by indicating that Clinton\u2019s statements had actually been more accurate, overall, than those of any other candidate running for president (though the difference between Clinton\u2019s and Sanders\u2019s ratings was not statistically significant).<\/p>\n
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We then asked all respondents to gauge 1) the extent to which they viewed Clinton, Sanders, and Trump as \u201chonest,\u201d and 2) the reliability of such fact-checkers. We wanted to see how exposure to the PolitiFact graphic might affect how people would respond to both questions, and whether those effects might differ depending on whether a respondent was a Republican (n=191), a Sanders supporter (n=154), a Clinton supporter (n=166), or an \u201cundecided\u201d Democrat\/independent (n=111).<\/p>\n
Perceptions of relative candidate honesty<\/p>\n
Focusing first on the graphic\u2019s effect on evaluations of Clinton\u2019s honesty, relative to that of her two rivals, the charts below reveal that seeing the graphic increased Clinton supporters\u2019 assessments of her honesty by about 9 percentage points relative to Trump\u2019s, and by about 12 percentage points relative to Sanders\u2019s. These differences are pretty small, but could in theory affect supporters\u2019 enthusiasm and therefore turnout.<\/p>\n
Citizen perception of candidate honesty: Clinton versus Trump.\u00a0Graph created by authorsCitizen perceptions of candidate honesty: Clinton versus Sanders.\u00a0Graph created by authors<\/p>\n
Moreover, among potential primary voters who were at that time still undecided, exposure to the PolitiFact graphic seemed to increase mean appraisal of Clinton\u2019s honesty by about 14 percentage points relative to Trump (p<.05), and 13 percentage points relative to Sanders (p<.01).<\/p>\n
By contrast, and unsurprisingly, Republicans appear to have been unmoved by the PolitiFact graphic; exposure did not affect their evaluations of Clinton\u2019s honesty (or Trump\u2019s, for that matter).<\/p>\n
More notably, the same was true of Sanders supporters (who in general were even more likely than Republicans to view Clinton as dishonest, regardless of whether they saw the graphic).<\/p>\n
All told, fact-checking seems pretty toothless when it comes to persuading citizens to change their impressions of a political opponent \u2014 even when the opponent is in the same partisan family.<\/p>\n
Perceptions of fact-checker reliability<\/p>\n
What about perceptions of fact-checker reliability? Here the effects are much more striking. As the chart below reveals, when seeing a graphic implying that Clinton is more truthful than her reputation in some quarters suggests, the conclusion many of Clinton\u2019s detractors drew was that it must be \u201cfake news.\u201d Specifically, among those who saw the graphic, Sanders supporters were about 13 percent less likely to view fact-checkers as reliable, and Republicans were about 35 percent less likely to do so.<\/p>\n
Citizen assessment of fact-checkers\u2019 reliability, by exposure to PolitiFact graphic (0 = unreliable; 1 = reliable).\u00a0Graph created by authors<\/p>\n
Furthermore, and somewhat unexpectedly, undecided Democrats and independents also tended to react quite negatively to the graphic. They were about 33 percent less likely to view fact-checkers as reliable, compared with those who did not see the graphic.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0gist: fact-checking is no panacea<\/p>\n
To conclude, the results of this experiment suggest that encountering surprises on PolitiFact\u2019s Truth-o-Meter might increase supporters\u2019 enthusiasm toward their candidate, and might even encourage undecided voters to take another look. It does not, however, appear to cause a positive reevaluation of candidates whom voters oppose.<\/p>\n
Finally, whatever impact fact-checking might have on how citizens view candidates appears dwarfed by those citizens\u2019 tendency to discredit fact-checking when they don\u2019t like what they see \u2014 even among Democrats. This implies that the fact-checkers may have less and less influence over time, as more and more citizens encounter fact-checks that don\u2019t jibe with their preconceived notions, until the whole exercise becomes pointless. And that should worry those of us who have hoped that fact-checking could help re-route the \u201cpost-truth\u201d advance in American politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top of Form Bottom of Form Distrust of fact-checking is not restricted to the right Even fact-checkers are viewed through partisan lenses. By\u00a0David C. Barker,\u00a0Kim L. Nalder, and\u00a0Danielle Joesten Martin\u00a0\u00a0Jul 3, 2017, 11:30am EDT Share this story Share this on Facebook\u00a0(opens in new window) Share this on Twitter\u00a0(opens in new window) SHAREAll sharing options This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-96614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}