Political Ignorance - It's An American Tradition!

 A ninety-minute nap and back at getting through what is in my email. The big one is Scapegoating the Algorithm  (Asterisk) by Dan Williams.

Research in political science has consistently documented astonishingly high rates of political ignorance among American voters. A landmark 1964 study found that most voters were unaware of basic political facts, estimating that roughly 70% were unable to identify which party controlled Congress. Similarly, from the Salem witch trials in the late seventeenth century to the widespread Satanic panic of the late twentieth century, false rumors, misinformation, and widespread misperceptions have been ubiquitous throughout American history. As political scientist Brendan Nyhan writes, there was never a “golden age in which political debate was based on facts and truth,” and “no systematic evidence exists to demonstrate that the prevalence of misperceptions today (while worrisome) is worse than in the past.”

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Of course, social media plays a large and growing role within this partisan media ecosystem. Nevertheless, there are several reasons for thinking its impact is smaller than is often assumed. 

First, it is easy to forget that most Americans still consume vast amounts of political information through traditional media channels, such as television, radio, and print. For example, Fox News remains by far the most prominent source of news for Republicans and Independents who lean Republican, with 57% saying they regularly get news from the cable network. The next most popular, ABC News, is at 27%. Among Democrats, traditional news sources are even more dominant. 

Second, one landmark 2017 study led by Levi Boxell found that rates of polarization between 1996 and 2016 had increased the most among older Americans, the group least likely to use social media. 

Third, polarization has moved in different directions in countries with similar rates of social media use. A recent study also led by Boxell measured affective polarization (roughly, negative feelings towards opposing political parties) over the past four decades in twelve OECD countries. The United States experienced the largest increase in a trend that began decades before the advent of social media. However, half of the countries underwent a decrease in affective polarization during that time, including during the emergence of widespread social media use. 

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Nevertheless, a considerable body of empirical research suggests that the most acute epistemic challenges the country confronts today are concentrated among conservatives and the right-wing media ecosystem. 

Most obviously, there is the character of Donald Trump himself, as well as other elites associated with the Republican Party, such as Elon Musk or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Although it is difficult to quantify these things scientifically, the frequency and brazenness with which such figures spread false and misleading content seems unprecedented in recent American politics and finds no parallels among mainstream liberal politicians and pundits.

Second, research consistently finds that fake news and low-quality news more broadly are far more prominent among conservative audiences. Moreover, although surprisingly high rates (roughly 30-40%) of liberal voters endorse beliefs about election fraud when their party loses, this is much lower than the over 60% of Republicans who believe the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election, which was supported by an intensive top-down disinformation campaign by Trump and other Republican elites. 

Finally, the mistrust of established knowledge-producing institutions like science, public health authorities, and mainstream media is overwhelmingly concentrated among Republican voters. Although a measured mistrust might be warranted or at least understandable in some cases, the estrangement of many Republican voters from these institutions means that punditry and media coverage on the political right are much less constrained by scientific evidence, fact-checking, and professional journalistic norms. 

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While there is significant scholarly controversy over the causes of epistemic dysfunction on the American right today, some of the most important factors appear to have little to do with social media.

Perhaps the most consequential trend concerns America’s intense “diploma divide,” a fundamental realignment of American politics along educational lines. In recent decades, the Democratic Party’s voter base has shifted towards highly educated, urban professionals who dominate the knowledge economy and prestigious institutions. In contrast, the Republican Party has become the political home for white Americans who lack four-year college degrees.  

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Nevertheless, the current balance of evidence does not support blaming America’s epistemic challenges on social media. First, many of these challenges predate social media and can arise independently of it. Second, the uneven distribution of such challenges across nations and political cultures with comparable rates of social media use suggests that social media alone is not what’s causing them. And finally, our best large-scale experiments show minimal effects of social media platforms, which aligns with decades of research into media and social learning. 

Pogo was right all those decades ago.

 I put the blame on America's educational system, producing ignorance that will not threaten those running the country.

All we need now is a theme song.

sch 7/27