ABSTRACT Rather than framing disinformation as false facts which can be countered by true facts, we propose a model of disinformation as narrative by tracing three case studies of successful disinformation across Facebook and Twitter. As stories, disinformation disseminates throughout culture and exists at all levels of media and across genres. Using a dataset of content hosted on URLs shared widely on social media corresponding to U.S. left, right, and nonpartisan examples of disinformation, we examine how successful disinformation circulates as narratives across platforms and genres. We find that all three case studies meet the formal criteria of narrative, and that narrative is intrinsically emotional and moral, providing catharsis for those who share it. Understanding that successful disinformation narratives are enforced by cultural forces, are intrinsically linked to identity, and hold deep emotional resonance for those with whom they resonate has vast implications for responding to and countering them.

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 When parties change their political positions, they risk being perceived as opportunistic and insincere by voters. How can parties change their positions without losing face? In this study, I argue that parties can combine positional change with a promise-based strategy to try to mitigate the reputational loss of this shift. Instead of focusing on the past, a party can attempt to gain credibility by taking high responsibility for a future policy. Since parties mostly lose credibility by diluting their ideological positions, I expect the promise-based strategy to be particularly useful in such situations. After identifying promises in hundreds of election manifestos across 32 countries, I show that parties make more promises when they dilute their position compared to when they stick to their position or crystallize it. This effect is statistically significant and increases when parties dilute their positions on their most salient issues. These results have implications for parties’ communication strategies and our understanding of credibility in modern politics.

ABSTRACT Prominent scholars have argued that reframing political positions and issues in terms of moral foundations that appeal to conservatives or liberals can attract more individual-level support for those positions, even when such support would be unexpected. Such a change of attitude would be promising for those looking to narrow ideological divides. As two independent research teams, we set out to explore the promising evidence along these lines and to identify further nuances in the arguments. We tested moral reframing in the context of five issue areas: the environment, tax policy, immigration, English as an official language, and universal healthcare. We consistently found null results, not just for overall samples but for sub-groups that have been hypothesized as the most likely to be affected by moral reframing. Using Bayes factors, the observed data are 100 times more likely to occur under the null hypothesis (of no effect) than the moral foundations hypothesis. We explored the reasons for these null results by examining possibilities such as misunderstanding the treatment, the negative or positive valence of the treatment, and small sample sizes. We found no plausible explanation for the absence of treatment effect. Moral reframing techniques may be less helpful to persuasion than previous research suggests.

ABSTRACT Despite a growing body of literature on computational propaganda, significant gaps remain in the existing literature, particularly in its Western-centric focus and emphasis on leading platforms, such as Twitter. This symposium attempts to address these gaps and extend our understanding of computational propaganda beyond Western contexts. The contributions of this symposium offer new theoretical insights, such as Performative Propaganda Engagement and the Reference Point Adjustment, to the literature. It also presents new empirical evidence from underexplored contexts, including Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Turkey, and Thailand. The papers published in the symposium provide a fresh understanding of these non-Western governments’ novel tactics and practices in sharing computational propaganda, which is not necessarily limited to conventional forms of disinformation or social platforms. This essay introduces the collection by outlining the concept of computational propaganda, examining its core components, and identifying enduring gaps in the literature, before demonstrating how the included contributions address these gaps.

ABSTRACT In contemporary digital societies, the status of epistemic authorities and democratic institutions is under severe strain by misinformation as well as delegitimizing accusations targeting legacy media, science, and legal institutions. Truth claims are increasingly subjected to ideological and partisan biases, which may result in the reinforcement of oppositions between camps that see the world from diametrically opposed factual beliefs. As a longer-term consequence, delegitimizing communication and attacks on epistemic and democratic institutions can even be associated with democratic backsliding. This wider context of an epistemic crisis has crucial implications for misinformation research and policy, emphasizing the need to view epistemic disorders from a more holistic and context-bound perspective.

ABSTRACT Why do we care about listening? This special issue examines listening in various political contexts, illuminating its profound role in democratic communication. Listening is not merely a passive act; it expresses, relies on, and alters power. If we understand listening and ignoring to be acts of political power, then it bears asking what a specifically democratic practice of listening entails. The articles included in this special issue enhance our understanding of democracy today by analyzing the antecedents and consequences of political listening. They employ philosophical, observational, and experimental methods to investigate when and how listening takes place, the obstacles to effective listening, and its implications for democratic representation, deliberation, and policymaking. In doing so, they draw much-needed scholarly attention to a pervasive yet underexplored aspect of political communication. The studies in this issue provide systematic accounts of how and why listening matters, particularly during times of democratic stress.

ABSTRACT What role does listening play in the minds of American citizens? We test key theoretical ideas about listening in contemporary US politics: that listening should be a part of a wide range of political attitudes and considerations, that listening should be defined by citizens in terms of fair consideration, and that listening should have a significant impact on evaluations of government officials. We begin with open-ended questions on salient political topics to present evidence that Americans often think about listening as they think about important features of democratic politics. This is true when discussing different topics (such as responsiveness, extremism, and political problems) and across different parts of the American polity (the public, experts, and politicians). We then document how Americans define listening through the use of open-ended data, finding that Americans frequently think of listening as fair consideration of others’ ideas. Extending these findings with a conjoint experiment, we demonstrate that citizens react to listening from elected officials with more favorability and support in ways that are more powerful than other standard predictors (like policy responsiveness, partisanship, and shared group membership). After these analyses, we end with a discussion of how political science and politics broadly can benefit from an increased focus on listening.

ABSTRACT People have a well-known proclivity to prefer members of their in-group over members of their out-groups. Contemporary political decisions in democratic countries often revolve around racial/ethnic as well as national identities, and elections create competition around political parties, which can stoke out-group hostilities and reduce people’s willingness to listen to those with whom they disagree. We study ways to reduce this in-group bias. In Study 1, we find scant evidence that perspective taking motivates the typical partisan to be more empathetic and charitable toward an out partisan. At best, only those partisans who tend to be reflective are capable of taking the perspective of an opposing partisan. Recent research in neuroscience suggests that perspective taking is not sufficient for engendering warm feelings toward others. Instead, people need to be motivated to feel compassion for others. Consequently, in Study 2, we investigate in a preregistered experiment whether compassion training can encourage people to be less hostile toward out-partisans as well as individuals from racial out-groups and migrants. We find that compassion training has consistently small, but individually statistically insignificant, effects on positive feelings toward out-group members. We conclude with a discussion about the implication of these findings for designing deliberative institutions as well as avenues for future research.

ABSTRACT Two experiments examined the role of issue presentation and race on attitudes toward police (Study 1, N = 820) and election (Study 2, N = 1405) reform in the United States. Across both studies, it was found that when a ballot measure was framed as though it would be implemented within a Black community, the policy received less support than the same ballot in a White community. For police reform, results suggest that more positive framing led to higher policy support than negative framing. Across both studies, symbolic racism scores predicted opposition toward police reform (Study 1) and support for election reform (Study 2), particularly for White participants, and found evidence of racial battle fatigue for Black participants. Together, this work illustrates the complicated ways race impacts U.S. public policy support and highlights how racial dynamics negatively influence perceptions of policies that disproportionally impact communities of color. Considering these findings, we offer strategies, guided by framing theory, to help practitioners communicate more strategically about racialized policies. The normative goal of this work is to use this understanding to improve the equitability of public policy. That said, these efforts require practitioners and theorists alike to acknowledge the pernicious role racial prejudices play in the U.S. political system.