Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cantarella, Michele
• Fraccaroli, Nicolò
• Volpe, Roberto

Titel

Does fake news affect voting behaviour?

Ist Teil von

• Research policy, 2023-01, Vol.52 (1), p.104628, Article 104628

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We study the impact of fake news on votes for populist parties in the Italian elections of 2018. Our empirical strategy exploits the historical variation in Italian-speaking and German-speaking voters in the Italian region of Trentino Alto-Adige/Südtirol as an exogenous source of assignment to fake news exposure. Using municipal data, we compare the effect of exposure to fake news on the vote for populist parties in the 2013 and 2018 elections. To do so, we introduce a novel indicator of populism using text mining on the Facebook posts of Italian parties before the elections. Our findings support the view that exposure to fake news favours populist parties regardless of prior support for populist parties, but also that fake news alone cannot explain most of the growth in populism. •We exploit language differences to study the causal effect of fake news on voting.•Language affects exposure to fake news.•German-speaking voters from South Tyrol (Italy) are less likely to be exposed to misinformation.•Exposure to fake news favours populist parties regardless of prior support for populist parties.•However, fake news alone cannot explain most of the growth in populism.