You Won’t Believe Our Results! But They Might: Heterogeneity in Beliefs About the Accuracy of Online Media

IF 3.2 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Journal of Experimental Political Science Pub Date : 2021-01-20 DOI:10.1017/XPS.2020.41

Mario Luca, Kevin Munger, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker

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引用次数: 7

Abstract

Abstract “Clickbait” media has long been espoused as an unfortunate consequence of the rise of digital journalism. But little is known about why readers choose to read clickbait stories. Is it merely curiosity, or might voters think such stories are more likely to provide useful information? We conduct a survey experiment in Italy, where a major political party enthusiastically embraced the esthetics of new media and encouraged their supporters to distrust legacy outlets in favor of online news. We offer respondents a monetary incentive for correct answers to manipulate the relative salience of the motivation for accurate information. This incentive increases differences in the preference for clickbait; older and less educated subjects become even more likely to opt to read a story with a clickbait headline when the incentive to produce a factually correct answer is higher. Our model suggests that a politically relevant subset of the population prefers Clickbait Media because they trust it more.

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你不会相信我们的结果!但他们可能:关于网络媒体准确性的信念的异质性

长期以来，“标题党”媒体一直被认为是数字新闻兴起的不幸后果。但读者为什么会选择阅读标题党报道，我们知之甚少。这仅仅是出于好奇，还是选民们认为这样的故事更有可能提供有用的信息?我们在意大利进行了一项调查实验，在那里，一个主要政党热情地接受了新媒体的美学，并鼓励他们的支持者不信任传统媒体，转而支持在线新闻。我们为受访者提供正确答案的金钱激励，以操纵准确信息动机的相对显著性。这种动机增加了对标题党偏好的差异;年龄较大和受教育程度较低的受试者更有可能选择阅读标题为“标题党”的文章，因为得出事实正确答案的动机更高。我们的模型表明，政治上相关的人群更喜欢标题党媒体，因为他们更信任它。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Experimental Political Science Social Sciences-Sociology and Political Science

CiteScore

5.10

自引率

8.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Experimental Political Science (JEPS) features cutting-edge research that utilizes experimental methods or experimental reasoning based on naturally occurring data. We define experimental methods broadly: research featuring random (or quasi-random) assignment of subjects to different treatments in an effort to isolate causal relationships in the sphere of politics. JEPS embraces all of the different types of experiments carried out as part of political science research, including survey experiments, laboratory experiments, field experiments, lab experiments in the field, natural and neurological experiments. We invite authors to submit concise articles (around 4000 words or fewer) that immediately address the subject of the research. We do not require lengthy explanations regarding and justifications of the experimental method. Nor do we expect extensive literature reviews of pros and cons of the methodological approaches involved in the experiment unless the goal of the article is to explore these methodological issues. We expect readers to be familiar with experimental methods and therefore to not need pages of literature reviews to be convinced that experimental methods are a legitimate methodological approach. We will consider longer articles in rare, but appropriate cases, as in the following examples: when a new experimental method or approach is being introduced and discussed or when novel theoretical results are being evaluated through experimentation. Finally, we strongly encourage authors to submit manuscripts that showcase informative null findings or inconsistent results from well-designed, executed, and analyzed experiments.