The Liar’s Dividend: How Deepfakes and Fake News Affect Politicians and Media

• In Event: Misinformation: Effects

Abstract

This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf" over fake news. While previous work has addressed the direct effects of misinformation, we focus on indirect effects and argue that strategic and false allegations that stories are fake news or deepfakes benefit politicians by helping them maintain support in the face of information damaging to their reputation. We posit that this concept, known as the "liar's dividend,'' works through two theoretical channels: by injecting informational uncertainty into the media environment that upwardly biases evaluations of the politician, or by providing rhetorical cover which supports motivated reasoning by core supporters. To evaluate these potential impacts of the liar's dividend, we administer a survey experiment through Lucid to 2,000 American adults, and randomly assign vignette treatments detailing hypothetical politician responses to a real embarrassing or scandalous story. We employ a 2x3 factorial design, varying both media format (text or video story) and the manner of politician response to the negative story, and assess impacts on belief in the story, support for the politician, and trust in the media. Our results provide causal evidence demonstrating how communicative strategies alleging misinformation pay off for politicians, and reveal possible mitigating factors such as media and digital literacy.

Authors

• Daniel S. Schiff, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Emory University

• Natalia Salgado Bueno, Emory University