“Do People Demand Fact-Checked News? Evidence from US Democrats”, 2021-12-15 (; similar):
We study how fact-checking affects the demand for news among Democrats.
There is a muted demand for fact-checking of ideologically aligned news.
Fact-checking reduces demand among Democrats with strong ideological views.
Fact-checking increases demand among ideologically moderate Democrats.
In a large-scale online experiment with US Democrats, we examine how the demand for a newsletter about an economic relief plan changes when the newsletter content is fact-checked.
We first document an overall muted demand for fact-checking when the newsletter features stories from an ideologically aligned source, even though fact-checking increases the perceived accuracy of the newsletter. The average impact of fact-checking masks substantial heterogeneity by ideology: fact-checking reduces demand among Democrats with strong ideological views and increases demand among ideologically moderate Democrats. Furthermore, fact-checking increases demand among all Democrats when the newsletter features stories from an ideologically non-aligned source.
[Keywords: fact-checking, news demand, information, media bias, belief polarization]