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NEW PREPRINT w/ @dbroockman. We conducted a real-world experiment to study the effects of partisan media. In Sept 2020, we paid people who normally watch Fox News to instead watch CNN. Median person was paid $15/hour for 7 hrs/week for 4 wks to watch CNN. Thread on results 1/
@mattyglesias has a good piece covering the experiment ( https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-03/what-if-fox-news-viewers-watched-cnn-instead). You can read the full preprint at https://osf.io/jrw26/ 2/
Broadly speaking, during this time, CNN focused overwhelmingly on problems with COVID and racism and Trump's purported failings on these issues. Fox instead focused on violence from BLM protests, Biden/Dem support for protests, and downplaying the severity of COVID 3/
We found that shifting people's media slants from Fox to CNN: (1) made them care more about COVID; (2) learn different information about current events; (3) become more supportive of vote-by-mail; and (4) become more negative towards Trump/GOP 4/
This was an intensive treatment, with 4 weeks of paid exposure to CNN. Quite different from, e.g., 5/ https://twitter.com/electproject/status/1510610108878835713?s=21&t=0gCWwnNpBFzrGN-21v5v3Q
A really interesting finding: the treatment group became more aware of bias towards Fox. We found a 5pp *decrease* in agreement with the statement: "If Donald Trump did something bad, Fox News would discuss it" 6/
These results are surprising given who participated in the study: at baseline, these participants were strong Republicans who liked Trump and Fox and really disliked CNN. However, being paid to watch CNN still managed to change their beliefs and opinions 7/
As @mattyglesias notes in his @bopinion piece, this suggests that nobody is impossible to reach, persuasion (even if limited) is possible 8/ https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-03/what-if-fox-news-viewers-watched-cnn-instead
But, these effects may have declined after the payments stopped. However, wide confidence intervals leave these results ambiguous 9/
This study shows more than how CNN benefits Dems and Fox benefits GOP. It shows how partisan media hides and filters information from viewers, thereby undermining the electorate's ability to hold their elected officials accountable. 10/
Given limited $, we paid Fox viewers to watch CNN, instead of reverse, to test our argument that aligned partisan sources hide information needed for accountability of copartisan politicians (as of Sept 2020, President Trump). 11/
If we were to conduct the same experiment today, we would do the opposite: pay CNN viewers to instead watch Fox. For example, CNN may be downplaying inflation relative to Fox: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/01/13/how_is_inflation_being_covered_on_television_news.html 12/
If you've made it this far, hope you'll read the working paper. Feel free to email any questions or comments. Thanks! https://osf.io/jrw26/ END/
