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7 2021 17:00 - 18:15
Webinar

Political Economy - Joint with the Department of Social and Political Sciences

Does Exposure to Online Partisan Media Affect Political Attitudes and Behavior?


Pablo Barberá (University of Southern California) Abstract


Abstract: What role do ideologically extreme media play in the polarization of society? Here, we report results from a pre-registered, randomized field experiment embedded in a nationally representative online panel survey (N = 1,037) in which participants were incentivized to change their browser default settings and social media following patterns, boosting the likelihood of encountering news with either a left-leaning (HuffPost) or right-leaning (Fox News) slant during the 2018 U.S. midterm election campaign. Data on 19 million web visits by respondents indicate that resulting changes in news consumption habits persisted for at least eight weeks. While we find little evidence of a direct polarizing effect on opinions or affect, a large, durable decrease in overall media trust emerges among those exposed to Fox News within the first few weeks of the intervention (CACE: -0.55 SD; p<0.05). These consequences appear to broaden over the longer term: Nearly five months later, participants assigned to either partisan news source continue to have lower trust in the media writ large. We additionally find that HuffPost liberalized respondents' views on immigration policy during the campaign (CACE: 0.50 SD; p<0.05), consistent with topic models demonstrating the outlet's emphasis on the humanitarian dimension of the issue during this period. The combination of experimentation and computational social science techniques helps shed light on the long-term corrosive consequences of exposure to partisan news as well as its ability to influence views on highly salient topics.
by invitation: for information or to receive the invitation link contact patrizia.pellizzari@unibocconi.it