Article
Information, Misinformation, and Political Participation
American Review of Politics
(2006)
Abstract
This research addresses the extent to which political participation is a function of misinformation. A large body of work links information with participation, but relatively few authors have addressed the relationship between misinformation and participation. We use data from a 1997 random-digit-dial survey of 810 adults in San Diego to test the hypothesis that misinformation (confident beliefs in false facts) is associated with political participation even after controlling for other explanations, including information. We find that while both misinformation and information tend to increase participation levels, their specific impacts vary. This research ends a period of speculation by presenting empirical evidence of misinformed participation for the first time in the literature.
Disciplines
Publication Date
April, 2006
DOI
10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2006.27.0.71-90
Citation Information
Kenneth M White, Michael Binder, Richard Ledet and Richard Hofstetter. "Information, Misinformation, and Political Participation" American Review of Politics Vol. 24 (2006) ISSN: 2374-7781 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kenneth-white/6/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-SA International License.