News Accuracy
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)
- Chair: Michael Sinkinson, Northwestern University
Fake News: Susceptibility, Awareness and Solutions
Abstract
This paper investigates and quantifies citizens’ susceptibility to fake news and assesses, using a randomized control trial, the effectiveness of a policy intervention to raise awareness. We find that the average citizen lacks proficiency in identifying fake news and harbors an inflated perception of his/her ability to differentiate between true and fake news content. Increasing awareness by providing information about personal susceptibility to fall for fake news causally adjusts individuals’ beliefs about their fake news detection ability. Most importantly, we show that the simple intervention of informing citizens about their personal susceptibility to fall for fake news causally increases their willingness to pay for the fact-checking service.Screen vs Scene: Impact of News and TV on Belief Formation
Abstract
This study examines the influence of news and television on belief formation. We analyze public beliefs using data from an online survey of a nationally representative US sample, comparing the results with both current and historical news, and content from popular media. We focus on the influence of streaming movies and TV shows in the US to see how media shapes opinions. By explicitly modeling belief updating we further enhance our understanding of these processes. Our findings suggest that popular culture, including both fictional and non-fictional content, significantly influences people's views. This research highlights the significant effect media representations of issues like terrorism, COVID-19, global warming, and international relations.Technological Advance, Intellectural Property Rights and Media Bias: Evidence from China's Newspaper Industry
Abstract
The advance of information technologies has not fortify democracy as once anticipated, but instead witnesses increased political polarization, a revival of nationalism, and a resurgence of strongman rule. These changes in the political landscape can be partially attributed to new technologies' impact on the media sector that changes public attitudes. In China, the political centralization after 2013 can relate to the pro-government bias displayed by the media around the same time. However, why do technological advancements lead to media adopting a more pro-government stance?While censorship is a notable way technology affects the media, this paper focuses on a different challenge: the poorly enforced intellectual property rights amid newspapers' shift to digital. During this digital shift, platforms like Toutiao, sharing ownership with TikTok, blatantly scrape online newspaper content to attract traffic. The Chinese government's lenient stance on copyright infringements, coupled with minimal penalties, essentially endorses this practice. As Toutiao becomes a primary news source, newspapers find themselves cornered into selling their content at minimal prices, forfeiting their ability to monetize online content. This forces reliance on local government subsidies, significantly biasing their reporting in favor of the government.
Utilizing the regional variances in China's 3G coverage, this study explores the impact of 3G technology on local newspapers’ political leanings. Adopting the methodology from Qin et al. (2018), we develop an index to measure newspapers' political bias by categorizing content into themes such as government-endorsed reporting, sensitive or negative coverage, and commercial content. Our analysis shows that the rollout of 3G significantly reduces the revenue newspapers earn from print sales, with only minimal gains in online revenue. The reliance on government subsidies as a result leads to an increase in political bias. We employ the frequency of local lightning strikes as an instrumental variable to mitigate endogeneity concerns.
JEL Classifications
- D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty