As we all learned in high school, citizens of a good democratic government are well-informed, able to sort through the issues of the day in deciding who to vote for or what is a good policy. … Implicit here is the assumption that while citizens’ preferences may differ, they agree on the important facts.
But our research suggests the opposite: political misinformation is rampant. Widely shared misinformation hampers democracy because it makes it difficult for groups of people to take effective and appropriate action on shared civic problems. CONT.
Jennifer Hochschild (Harvard) & Katherine Levine Einstein (Boston U.), The Monkey Cage