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Research project

Fact-Checking Politicians

The accuracy of voters’ beliefs is crucial for the efficiency of democracy. Yet, “fake news” and “alternative facts” seems to have recently gained prominence in politics (Alcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Alcott et al. 2019). Is it the case that fact-checking politicians could reduce the spread of misinformation and improve the accuracy of voters’ beliefs? This project will shed light on this issue by designing and performing a novel field experiment aimed at measuring the extent to which politicians respond to fact-checking. The research design will rely on a randomized field experiment in collaboration with the leading Italian fact-checking company “Pagella Politica”.

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