Persuading the Enemy: Estimating the Persuasive Effects of Partisan Media with the Preference-Incorporating Choice and Assignment Design
Name
MediaChoice_190521_public.pdf
Description
Accepted version
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422.01 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
680d2c04971507f2732b5cc36e9d6502
Author(s)
De Benedictis-Kessner, Justin
Baum, Matthew A.
Berinsky, Adam
Yamamoto, Teppei
Date Issued
July 2019
Journal
American Political Science Review
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Citation
de Benedictis-Kessner, Justin et al. "Persuading the Enemy: Estimating the Persuasive Effects of Partisan Media with the Preference-Incorporating Choice and Assignment Design." American Political Science Review 113, 4 (November 2019): 902-916 © 2019 American Political Science Association
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Does media choice cause polarization, or merely reflect it? We investigate a critical aspect of this puzzle: How partisan media contribute to attitude polarization among different groups of media consumers. We implement a new experimental design, called the Preference-Incorporating Choice and Assignment (PICA) design, that incorporates both free choice and forced exposure. We estimate jointly the degree of polarization caused by selective exposure and the persuasive effect of partisan media. Our design also enables us to conduct sensitivity analyses accounting for discrepancies between stated preferences and actual choice, a potential source of bias ignored in previous studies using similar designs. We find that partisan media can polarize both its regular consumers and inadvertent audiences who would otherwise not consume it, but ideologically opposing media potentially also can ameliorate the existing polarization between consumers. Taken together, these results deepen our understanding of when and how media polarize individuals.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055419000418
