The effects of journalistic intervention and falsely balanced reporting on support for voter ID law

Abstract

Does the way journalists report on electoral fraud affect Americans' support for voter ID laws? Drawing on an original survey experiment, we show that exposure to reporting on voter fraud that contains weight-of-evidence information and factual corrections reduces support for voter ID laws. The results of a causal mediation analysis show that this effect is mediated by beliefs about the severity of voter fraud. Further, we find that news source attribution does not moderate this effect.