Sunshine Hillygus, Duke University: Misusing Polls in the Media: The Consequences of Survey Clickbait

CSDP AMERICAN POLITICS COLLOQUIUM
Date
Mar 23, 2023, 12:00 pm1:20 pm
Location
Audience
Faculty, fellows, and graduate students only

Speaker

Details

Event Description

In today’s competitive information environment, clicks are the currency of the digital media landscape. Clickbait journalism attempts to entice attention with provocative and sensational headlines, and these often include reference to polling results about the public’s shocking beliefs or ignorance. Does such survey clickbait—polling that relies on dubious questions or misleading interpretations—undermine perceptions of Americans’ capacity for democratic citizenship? In two survey experiments, we find that exposure to apolitical survey clickbait unduly inflates perceptions of the American public’s ignorance and capacity for democratic citizenship. Reassuringly, the experiments do not find statistically significant impacts on downstream policy attitudes such as voting restrictions. Nonetheless, this study highlights the potential negative implications of survey clickbait and the need for scholarly attention to understanding its role in today’s media environment.

Sponsor
Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP)