Admissions-as-Corrections Reduce Belief in Election Conspiracy Theories

• In Event: Conspiracies and Misinformation in Comparative Political Psychology

Abstract

Throughout the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies engaged in a concerted campaign to cast doubt on the electoral process and results. Three years later, a majority of Republican respondents still endorse this misinformation, largely due to continued exposure to such claims from conservative media channels, including Fox News. Yet in early 2023, reporting related to a defamation case (Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News) revealed that Fox News was cognizant that no fraud had occurred, despite such claims found within their programming. I leverage this event to examine whether this novel form of correction—namely, the admission by the actors themselves that claims they disseminated are untrue—reduces support for anti-democratic conspiracy beliefs. To test this, I selectively vary exposure to news clips covering Fox News’ hypocrisy within a preregistered survey experiment. I show that admissions-as-corrections effectively and substantially reduce belief in the specific election conspiracy beliefs disseminated by Fox News, with smaller effects for broader partisan conspiracy theories. This exposure also decreases support for and patronage of Fox News within an increasingly competitive conservative media market.

Author

• James Fahey, University of Memphis