At #APSA2022, @Sacha_Altay asks whether there really was a dramatic "infodemic" during the pandemic? The answer is 'no'.

In fact, people turned towards more trustworthy news sources. 1/6
To quantify the so-called "infodemic", visits to news websites and interactions with news outlets on Facebook was tracked from July '17 to July '21.

News outlets were rated on trustworthiness using NewsGuard, which evaluates news on journalistic norms of credibility. 2/6
So, did people turn to more or less trustworthy news during the pandemic?

In the US, there was a strong turn towards more trustworthy news sites in March '20. This pattern also occurs in UK, France & Germany (i.e., all countries tracked). 3/6
The pattern is similar for visits to news sites & Facebook engagements but less clear on FB. Also, untrustworthy news are more popular on FB. In general, web traffic to untrustworthy news is just a few % but are up to 20 % on FB. 4/6
Furthermore, this role of untrustworthy news on FB implies that both trustworthy and untrustworthy news sites benefitted from a general increase in FB traffic during the pandemic. 5/6
You can read the paper here: journalqd.org/article/view/3… 6/6

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More from @M_B_Petersen

Sep 17
At #APSA2022, Tsveta Petrova asks: Do political scandals mobilize populist voters because it gives proof of "corrupt elites"? And what happens if it is the populist elites that are the focus of the scandal? 1/5
The dataset are data on political scandals in Hungary and Poland from 2000 to 2020. This includes scandals related to legality, morality and democratic violations. This is connected to data on electoral support (i.e., vote shares). 2/5
The data shows that populist elites are heavily involved in scandals when they come to power. But having populist in power also increases scandals among the opposition, in part, because the populists use official media to target the opposition. 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Sep 17
Populists in power undermine democratic institutions but are these actions aligned with the preferences of their voters?, asks Tsveta Petrova at #APSA2022 1/5
In general, some prior research suggests that populist supports are loyal to pluralist democracy. Other research suggests that populist supporters do not, in fact, support democracy. 2/5
A third possibility is that populist voters support a particular form of democracy: majoritarian democracy, where decisions reflect the "will of the people". 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Sep 17
At #APSA2022, Natasha Wunsch asks why voters tolerate democratic backsliding, focusing on the Hungarian case. 1/9
The puzzle is why citizens who state they support democracy still support undemocratic leaders? There is a growing literature on partisanship and how group psychology produce acceptance of inparty candidates, even if they are undemocratic. 2/9
But these findings are not entirely reproducible. Instead, it may be that there is heterogeniety among supporters of authoritarian politics. The party essentially builds a large voter coalition and this enables them to stay in power. 3/9
Read 9 tweets
Sep 17
At APSA2022, @ArifMemovic asks why Americans sometimes are willing to excuse political violence? 1/7
The common sense notion is that political violence is prohibited in democracies. But there is political violence and surveys show some (and increasing) support for political violence. But this is controversial & there are a larger methods discussion about the survey evidence 2/7
In the present study, it is asked whether people evaluate acts of political violence depending on the severity of the act and the identity of the perpetrator?

In other words, are all acts judged equally? Are people act- or identity-centered? 3/7
Read 7 tweets
Sep 17
At #APSA2022, @EricGroenendyk asks how perceptions of politics as conflict shape other political attitudes.

While many often see politics as conflict over resources, it may also be conceptualized as joint problem-solving. Does perceptions of this matter? 1/10
This is part of a larger project. In a published paper, it has already been shown that politics-as-conflict activates motivated reasoning. The present results focus on how politics-as-conflict perceptions shape political engagement. 2/10
Prior research suggests that conflict orientations increases engagement in politics. This raises the question of whether participatory democracy is even compatible with delibrative problem-solving democracy? 3/10
Read 10 tweets
Sep 17
At #APSA2022, @Bryan_Gervais asks whether elite political incivility polarizes the electorate?

There are two camps: One says 'yes' and one says 'no'. The latter camp argues that incivility may in fact depolarize.

But: May the effect depend on the conditions of incivility? 1/6
When may in-elite hostility polarize? Perhaps in competitive elections where status threats are clear. Prior research shows that status threats lead to preferences for aggression. But when status threats are not clear, incivility might be rejected by partisans. 2/6
The data comes from four experiments in online surveys. The timing of these surveys differed in their distance to a competitive election. In the surveys, participants are exposed to civil versus incivil political statements from in-party elites. 3/6
Read 6 tweets

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