(Mis)Informed: What Americans Know About Social Groups and Why it Matters for Politics

Description

This Element examines just how much the public knows about some of America's most stigmatized social groups, who comprise 40.3% of the population, and evaluates whether misinformation matters for shaping policy attitudes and candidate support. The authors design and field an original survey containing large national samples of Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, and White Americans, and include measures of misinformation designed to assess the amount of factual information that individuals possess about these groups. They find that Republicans, Whites, the most racially resentful, and consumers of conservative news outlets are the most likely to be misinformed about socially marginalized groups. Their analysis also indicates that misinformation predicts hostile policy support on racialized issues; it is also positively correlated with support for Trump. They then conducted three studies aimed at correcting misinformation. Their research speaks to the prospects of a well-functioning democracy, and its ramifications on the most marginalized. Cover Title page Copyright page (Mis)Informed: What Americans Know About SocialGroups and Why it Matters for Politics Contents 1 The Politics of Racialized Misinformation 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Regulated News Sources and Portrayals of Social Groups 1.3 Unregulated News Sources and Misinformation 1.4 The Power of Directionally Motivated Reasoning 1.4.1 Social Identity 1.4.2 Racial Attitudes 1.4.3 Partisan and Ideological Affiliation 1.4.4 News Source 1.5 Plan of the Element 2 What Does the Public Know about Socially Marginalized Groups? 2.1 Measuring Political Misinformation 2.2 Survey Design and Data 2.3 How Misinformed Is the Public? 2.3.1 Is the Public Equally Misinformed? 2.3.2 Are Social Groups Less Misinformed about Their Own Group? 2.3.3 Exploring the Determinants of Political Misinformation 2.4 Robustness Checks 2.5 Conclusion 3 The Political Consequences of Racialized Misinformation 3.1 Measuring Support for Restrictive Racialized Policies 3.2 Unpacking the Relationship between Political Misinformation and Policy Preferences 3.3 Misinformation and Candidate Support/Evaluation 3.4 Discussion 4 Implications of a (Mis)Informed Public 4.1 Does Being Informed Affect Policy Support? 4.2 Correcting Misinformation: (Lack of) Causal Evidence 4.2.1 Aggregate Experimental Results 4.2.2 Heterogeneous Treatment Effects 4.3 Broader Implications 4.3.1 Future Research Avenues Bibliography