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Pedro Hemsley, Marcio Firmo and Vitor Onuki |
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''How relevant is information? Some experimental evidence'' |
( 2023, Vol. 43 No.4 ) |
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This paper examines the role of information from expert sources in opinion formation. While fact checking with experts has been widely adopted as a tool to fight fake news, it remains unclear whether people actually use such information to form their opinions, given that opinion formation may be influenced by a variety of factors. To investigate this, we conducted online experiments on three topics (gun violence, global warming, and Covid-19) to measure the impact of information from experts on opinion formation. Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group, with the former receiving objective information from expert sources about the topic and the latter receiving none. Results indicate that objective information had a non-significant impact on opinion formation across all topics, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of using it to counter fake news. Additionally, we find a strong correlation between political position and opinion formation. |
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Keywords: Objective information, trust in experts, fact checking, opinion formation, fake news |
JEL: D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General C9 - Design of Experiments: General |
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Manuscript Received : Mar 21 2023 | | Manuscript Accepted : Dec 30 2023 |
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