Truth decayHow Partisan Hostility Leads People to Believe Falsehoods

Published 18 October 2019

Researchers now have a better idea of why people who rely on partisan news outlets are more likely to believe falsehoods about political opponents. And no, it isn’t because these consumers live in media “bubbles” where they aren’t exposed to the truth. Instead, it has to do with how partisan media promote hostility against their rivals.

Researchers now have a better idea of why people who rely on partisan news outlets are more likely to believe falsehoods about political opponents.

And no, it isn’t because these consumers live in media “bubbles” where they aren’t exposed to the truth. Instead, it has to do with how partisan media promote hostility against their rivals.

Using data from the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, researchers from The Ohio State University found that Americans who consumed more partisan media had stronger negative feelings than others toward political opponents.

This dislike was linked to greater belief in misperceptions about those from the “other side.”

“Partisan news outlets promote a feeling of animosity toward the other side and that animosity can help explain inaccurate beliefs,” said R. Kelly Garrett, lead author of the study and professor of communication at Ohio State.

“As people grow increasingly hostile towards those with whom they disagree, our study found they are more likely to believe false information about them.”

The findings suggested that the link between partisan media use, hostility and belief in falsehoods was more pronounced among Republicans than among Democrats. Garrett said this finding was “provocative,” but that this data alone isn’t enough to prove that association.

But the findings, published online this week in the Journal of Communication, do offer a grim warning.

“If this (partisan) hostility translates into a willingness to believe anything that members of your party tell you, regardless of empirical evidence or claims made by those not belonging to the ingroup, then the U.S. political situation is dire,” the study authors wrote.

Two surveys were designed and implemented by Garrett and his colleagues.

OSU notes that during the 2012 presidential election campaign, 652 Americans were interviewed online three times: near the beginning and middle of the campaign and right after the election.

During each wave of the study, the participants were asked about how often they used partisan news outlets to get information about the presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. They also rated how favorably they felt about each candidate on a scale of 0 to 10.

They also rated on a scale of 1 (definitely false) to 5 (definitely true) whether they believed four statements about Obama and four statements about Romney that were false but had been reported in partisan media outlets.