Tyler Smith<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, fake news, disinformation, and social media have put a spotlight<\/a> on the need for an informed electorate in modern democracies. But while some<\/a> observers<\/a> place the blame for \u201cpost-truth\u201d politics on partisan echo chambers, the biggest gaps in voters’ knowledge may come from socioeconomic factors, according to a paper in the American Economic Review<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The authors, Charles Angelucci<\/a> and Andrea Prat<\/a>, investigated how well a cross-section of US voters were able to sift true and false news stories, as assessed by mainstream journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe felt like this huge focus on fake news, even though it makes sense, came at the expense of our understanding of how information about real news is distributed in society,\u201d Angelucci told the AEA in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to measure Americans’ knowledge of current events, however, a tricky question had to be answered first: What political news should voters be informed about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n One common approach is for researchers to survey Americans by designing questions about political news themselves. But that method is in danger of being skewed by the subjectivity of the researchers, according to Angelucci.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u03a0\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae: www.aeaweb.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n