ABSTRACT
Contrary to the despair of popular narratives, fake news accounted for limited amounts of news consumption during the 2016 US presidential election. In this chapter, we explore how giving people baseline statistical information about fake news consumption may influence subjective judgments about how much fake news is consumed, who consumes it, and the importance of fake news as a problem. Such baselines may contrast with more extreme existing inferences derived from anecdotal experience, and serve to drive down subjective assessments. Conversely, by raising the salience of fake news, baseline consumption information could increase the intensity of subjective assessments. Using a survey experiment (n = 981), we find that the effects of baseline information on fake news perceptions are likely small. Moreover, without the proper contextualization, this information may do more to exacerbate than to downplay perceived prevalence and concern about fake news. Simultaneous exposure to two baselines (the percent of all Americans exposed to fake news and the average number of articles consumed) increased perception that fake news consumption has increased since 2016, and increased general concern about fake news. We find little evidence that measures of political or cognitive sophistication moderate our treatment effects. We also find sizeable gaps in who the public thinks consumed the most fake news. Not surprisingly, the gaps are driven by the public’s own membership in various social categories. Our data show notable in-group biases in perceived consumption across 2016 vote preference, age, and educational attainment subgroups.
