ABSTRACT There are large and growing bodies of research highlighting inaccuracies in news coverage. In this paper, we suggest that negativity biases account for a substantial portion of longstanding inaccuracies (or “misinformation”) in coverage of a broad range of social, medical, environmental, political, and economic domains. As an illustrative example, we use automated content analyses of over 20 years of television news transcripts merged with unemployment data to measure the accuracy of unemployment coverage across the six major US broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBS, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), and then examine the degree to which variation in accuracy is associated with variation in the tendency to overweight negative information relative to positive information. Results reveal a connection between inaccuracy and negativity biases, a finding that we interpret as it relates to our understanding of misinformation in the news.

ABSTRACT Is personalized social media beneficial for female politicians, and how do voters respond to personalized posts from these candidates? To explore this question, this study employs a unique dual-method approach that integrates content analysis of candidates’ Facebook posts with online experiments evaluating voter responses. Additionally, the study refines the definition of personalization to include both the privatization of candidates’ personal lives and the individualization of their viewpoints. The findings show that although posts about candidates’ private lives are relatively rare, there’s been a notable rise in content reflecting individual viewpoints. Content analysis suggests that female candidates are less likely to use personalized messaging. However, online experiments reveal that voters respond positively to such content, increasing both likability and voting intentions. These results suggest that female candidates, still navigating gendered expectations, may be underestimating the advantages of personalization – possibly because voters’ attitudes have evolved more quickly than the candidates realize. This disparity between their limited use of personalized messaging and the favorable voter response underscores the complex influence of gender stereotypes on women in politics.

ABSTRACT As political parties around the world experiment with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in election campaigns, concerns about deception and manipulation are rising. This article examines how the public reacts to different uses of AI in elections and the potential consequences for party evaluations and regulatory preferences. Across three preregistered studies with over 7600 American respondents, we identify three categories of AI use: campaign operations, voter outreach, and deception. While people generally dislike AI in campaigns, they are especially critical of deceptive uses, which they perceive as norm violations. However, parties engaging in AI-enabled deception face no significant drop in favorability, neither with supporters, opponents, nor independents. Instead, deceptive AI use increases public support for stricter AI regulation, including calls for an outright ban on AI development. These findings indicate that public disapproval of deceptive uses of AI does not directly translate into incentives for parties to forgo them, at least in the polarized political environment of the US.

ABSTRACT When journalists perceive more misinformation from one side of the political spectrum, do they face a normative dilemma between truth and balance? Correcting one party more often in pursuit of truth can undermine news credibility, while maintaining balance to preserve credibility can be misleading. To assess whether the trade-off that I term the “truth-balance dilemma” exists in practice, I examine whether asymmetric corrections of one party undermine news credibility when considered across multiple topics. While prior studies have focused on single-issue contexts, this study highlights how individuals evaluate news sources based on their coverage of a range of issues. Through fact-checking datasets and national surveys, I find that, while journalists have corrected Republican misstatements more often, large segments of the public believe that misinformation comes from both parties or primarily from Democrats. Two preregistered experiments show that asymmetric corrections undermine credibility, but the effect depends on audience perceptions about who spreads misinformation. Individuals who blame both parties for misinformation discount credibility when a source mostly corrects one side—even when the imbalance favors their own side. Meanwhile, those who blame the opposing party find heavier corrections of that party as credible as balanced corrections, but view heavier corrections of their own party as less credible. By showing how the truth-balance dilemma stems from the perception gap between journalists and audiences, this study underscores the reputational risks that truth-seeking journalism faces in polarized environments.

ABSTRACT The growing adoption of large language models (LLMs) in political communication research has prompted excitement but also concern. In this opinion piece, we offer an informed and critical overview of common LLM use cases in the field, including text analysis, synthetic data generation, and experiments. We argue that while these tools can be appealing, they often introduce serious epistemic, environ-mental, and infrastructural trade-offs that are insufficiently acknowledged. Beyond technical limitations, we highlight deeper issues related to scholarly autonomy, methodological opacity, resources inequality, and corporate dependency. Rather than dismissing innovation, we advocate for critical reflexivity and a renewed commitment to methodological rigor. While examining shortcomings of LLMs in current practices, we also point to viable alternatives. In essence, we call for a more deliberate, context-sensitive integration of LLMs in social science – one that prioritizes transparency, sustainability, and scientific integrity.

ABSTRACT Elected officials occupy privileged positions in public communication about important topics – roles that extend to the digital world. In the same way that public officials stand to lead constructive online dialogue, they also hold the potential to accelerate the dissemination of harmful content. We explore and explain the sharing of misinformation, which we refer to as low-factual content, by examining nearly 500,000 Facebook posts by U.S. state legislators from 2020 to 2021. We validate a widely used low-factual content detection approach in misinformation studies and apply the measure to all of the posts we collect. Our findings reveal that the prevalence is rare, affecting less than 1% of legislators’ posts overall. However, Republican legislators share low-factual content at higher rates, and certain states emerge as hotspots for such content. We also find that conservative lawmakers are more likely to share such content, with this tendency potentially intensifying in conservative districts, and waning in liberal ones. Legislative professionalism plays a significant role in misinformation circulation: legislators with higher institutional capacity and resources tend to be less inclined to share low-factual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future interventions to reduce the spread of low-factual content.

ABSTRACT Local newspapers play an important role in informing the public and holding elected officials accountable, yet the consolidation of newspapers under an increasingly small number of owners has raised questions about the commitment of newsrooms to reporting on local politics. Of particular concern is the rise of newspaper owners that deal primarily in investment and not the media industry, such as private equity firms and hedge funds. I document 856 instances of ownership changes among daily newspapers between 2004–2020, with just under half involving a purchase by an owner who primarily deals in investments. I find that a newspaper’s acquisition by an investment-owner leads to more stories about national politics and fewer stories about local politics relative to acquisitions by other types of owners. I also find that a transition to investment ownership leads to reductions in both citizen knowledge and voter turnout. While the effects are not uniformly large or statistically robust across all outcomes, the results are broadly consistent with concerns that investment ownership may weaken local coverage and reduce political engagement in local politics.

ABSTRACT Does misinformation continue to influence political attitudes even after it has been effectively corrected? According to some influential studies, the answer is yes: while corrections may eliminate belief in false claims, they often fail to erase their attitudinal impact – a phenomenon known as “belief echoes.” To evaluate this claim, we conducted a preregistered, high-powered replication of two out of three experiments from a widely cited study which introduced the phenomenon, using the same treatment materials and a much larger, more representative sample. In the first experiment, the correction did not fully dispel belief in the misinformation, making it impossible to isolate a belief echo from the direct effects of continued belief. In the second, where the correction was demonstrably effective, we find no evidence of a lingering attitudinal effect.

ABSTRACT Political scandals can shape entire elections and political structures within society. Scholars have long pointed to different strategies politicians use to respond to such scandals, finding strategies like denying may be more effective than apologizing. However, in recent years, politicians are increasingly responding to accusations of scandal by emphasizing how they (or their political in-group) have been victimized. These victimhood strategies may be highly effective by garnering sympathy and reducing blame, but have yet to be studied in political scandal research. Across four studies in the United States (N = 3,013), we show that when politicians respond to scandal accusations by emphasizing their own (or their political in-group’s) victimhood, participants see them as more moral and less responsible for the scandal. Additionally, people are sympathetic to politicians emphasizing victimhood. Victimhood strategies do not reduce (and in fact, often enhance) competency evaluations, potentially making these strategies especially effective and attractive for politicians. While responding by highlighting victimhood is less beneficial than denial, victimhood strategies positively benefit reactions to scandalized politicians with people from across the ideological spectrum and work similarly well for male and female politicians. These findings underscore how responding to a scandal with victimhood can significantly and positively influence the public’s perceptions of a scandalized politician, highlighting the powerful influence of victimhood in political scandal research and political communication more broadly.