Abstract
Fact-checks have become prolific in U.S. campaigns over the last ten years. As a result, fact-checks have become one of the easiest ways for individuals to analyze the truthfulness of politicians’ statements. The increase in both fact-checking and its accessibility to voters led us to ask whether fact-checks influence individuals’ attitudes and evaluations of political candidates and campaign messages. To examine the impact of fact-checking, we conduct two original experiments using the 2012 Ohio Senate race between Republican challenger Josh Mandel and Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. The first experiment utilized a sample of over 300 students during the fall of 2013. The second experiment is a crowdsourced Amazon Mechanical Turk Sample in the fall of 2014. We find the content of fact-check messages are influential in altering assessments of candidates’ advertisements. We also find the source of the fact-check only modestly impacts assessments. The findings illustrate the potential power of fact-checks to influence the effectiveness of candidates’ messages and reaffirm the important role the news media plays in validating candidate claims and arguments during political campaigns.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 93-120 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Journal of Political Marketing |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- election campaign
- fact-checking
- media effects
- negativity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Marketing