… “Partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgment,” the political scientists Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira wrote in a recent paper. “The human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news” — a danger cited by political scientists far more frequently than orchestrated meddling — “poses […] Read more »
Trump may owe his 2016 victory to ‘fake news,’ new study suggests
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton concedes the 2016 presidential election. AP Photo/Matt Rourke Richard Gunther, The Ohio State University; Erik C. Nisbet, The Ohio State University, and Paul Beck, The Ohio State University Could “fake news” have helped determine the outcome of the 2016 presidential election? Social media users and intensely […] Read more »
Fake News and Bots May Be Worrisome, but Their Political Power Is Overblown
How easy is it to change people’s votes in an election? The answer, a growing number of studies conclude, is that most forms of political persuasion seem to have little effect at all. … In fact, a recent meta-analysis of numerous different forms of campaign persuasion, including in-person canvassing and […] Read more »
Avoiding the Echo Chamber about Echo Chambers: Why selective exposure to like-minded political news is less prevalent than you think
With critics decrying the “echo chambers,” “filter bubbles,” and “information cocoons” created by the rise of online news and social media, you’d think that the entire American public was consuming a near-exclusive diet of politically pleasing news. … However, these claims are vastly overstated. A deep dive into the academic […] Read more »
Infocalypse Now
In mid-2016, Aviv Ovadya realized there was something fundamentally wrong with the internet — so wrong that he abandoned his work and sounded an alarm. A few weeks before the 2016 election, he presented his concerns to technologists in San Francisco’s Bay Area and warned of an impending crisis of […] Read more »
Exploring ‘Truth Decay’
Over the past two decades, the role of facts and analysis in American public life has been diminishing, posing a threat to democracy and policymaking. With donor support, RAND president and CEO Michael Rich initiated a project with RAND political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh to investigate the phenomenon of “Truth Decay.” […] Read more »