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"Rumors and the misinformation they spread play an important role in American politics-and a dangerous one with direct consequences, such as wrecking trust in government, promoting hostility toward truth-finding, and swaying public opinion on otherwise popular policies. One only has to look at the rate of vaccination in the United States or peruse internet forums discussing the 2020 election to see lasting effects. How can democracy work if there is a persistence of widely held misinformation? In Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It, Adam Berinsky explains why incredulous and discredited stories about politicians and policies grab the public's attention and who is most likely to believe these stories and act on them. For instance, he shows that rather than a small set of people believing a lot of conspiracies, a lot of people believe some conspiracies; he also demonstrates that partisans are more likely to believe false rumors about the opposing party. Pulling from a wealth of social science work, and from his own original data, the author shows who believes political rumors, and why-and establishes how democracy is threatened when citizens base their political decision-making on the content of political rumors. While acknowledging that there is no one magical solution to the problem of misinformation, Berinsky explores strategies that can work to combat false information, such as targeting uncertain citizens rather than "true believers," and focusing on who is delivering the message ("neutral" third parties are often ineffective). Ultimately, though, the only long-term solution is for misinformation tactics to be disincentivized from the political elites and opinion leaders who dominate political discussion"--

"Rumors and the misinformation they spread play an important role in American politics-and a dangerous one with direct consequences, such as wrecking trust in government, promoting hostility toward truth-finding, and swaying public opinion on otherwise popular policies. One only has to look at the rate of vaccination in the United States or peruse internet forums discussing the 2020 election to see lasting effects. How can democracy work if there is a persistence of widely held misinformation? In Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It, Adam Berinsky explains why incredulous and discredited stories about politicians and policies grab the public's attention and who is most likely to believe these stories and act on them. For instance, he shows that rather than a small set of people believing a lot of conspiracies, a lot of people believe some conspiracies; he also demonstrates that partisans are more likely to believe false rumors about the opposing party. Pulling from a wealth of social science work, and from his own original data, the author shows who believes political rumors, and why-and establishes how democracy is threatened when citizens base their political decision-making on the content of political rumors. While acknowledging that there is no one magical solution to the problem of misinformation, Berinsky explores strategies that can work to combat false information, such as targeting uncertain citizens rather than "true believers," and focusing on who is delivering the message ("neutral" third parties are often ineffective). Ultimately, though, the only long-term solution is for misinformation tactics to be disincentivized from the political elites and opinion leaders who dominate political discussion"--

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Rumors in the Political World -- 3. The Roots of Rumor Belief -- 4. Can We Correct Rumors? -- 5. Rumors and Misinformation in the Time of Trump -- 6. The Role of Political Elites -- 7. Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Introduction and overview / Adam Berinsky -- The practice of survey research : changes and challenges / D. Sunshine Hillygus -- Citizen competence and democratic governance / Martin Gilens -- Ideology and public opinion / Christopher Federico -- Affective polarization or hostility across the party divide : an overview / Shanto Iyengar -- Racial attitudes and American politics / Michael Tesler -- Race, ethnicity, and public opinion / Erica Czaja and Vladimir E. Medenica -- Categorical politics in action : gender and the 2016 presidential election / Nancy Burns, Donald Kinder and MollyReynolds -- Worldview politics / Marc Hetherington -- The emotional foundations of democratic citizenship / Ted Brader and Erin Cikanek -- No longer "beyond our scope" : the biological and non-conscious underpinnings of pblic opinion / FrankGonzalez, John Hibbing and Kevin Smith -- The "daily them" : hybridity, political polarization and presidential leadership in a digital media age / MattBaum and Danna Young -- How people learn about politics : navigating the information environment / Jennifer Jerit -- Campaigns and elections / John Sides and Jake Haselswerdt -- Ambivalence in American public opinion about immigration / Deborah Schildkraut -- Public opinion and public policy / Andrea Louise Campbell and Elizabeth Rigby -- Conclusion : assessing continuity and change / David Sears.

Over the past century, opinion polls have come to pervade American politics. Despite their shortcomings, the notion prevails that polls broadly represent public sentiment. But do they? In Silent Voices, Adam Berinsky presents a provocative argument that the very process of collecting information on public preferences through surveys may bias our picture of those preferences. In particular, he focuses on the many respondents who say they ""don't know"" when asked for their views on the political issues of the day. Using opinion poll data collected over the past forty years, Berinsky takes a

Introduction: America at war -- Historical perspective -- Public opinion and war: a historical perspective -- The myths and meaning of public opinion and World War II -- The structure of support for war -- The calculation of costs: an innocent public -- Partisan structure of war support: events, elites, and the public -- Ethnic groups: attachments, enmities, and support for war -- Public opinion and war: back to the water's edge -- Civil liberties and war -- Elections during wartime -- Conclusions -- Appendix A: description of data and weighting -- Appendix B: Iraq war casualty survey analysis -- Appendix C: congressional record content analysis -- Appendix D: statistical significance of ethnic variables -- Appendix E: relationship between support for war and support for restricting civil liberties -- Appendix F: NES analysis of retrospective war support

Over the past century, opinion polls have come to pervade American politics. Despite their shortcomings, the notion prevails that polls broadly represent public sentiment. But do they? In Silent Voices, Adam Berinsky presents a provocative argument that the very process of collecting information on public preferences through surveys may bias our picture of those preferences. In particular, he focuses on the many respondents who say they "don't know" when asked for their views on the political issues of the day. Using opinion poll data collected over the past forty years, Berinsky takes an increasingly technical area of research--public opinion--and synthesizes recent findings in a coherent and accessible manner while building on this with his own findings. He moves from an in-depth treatment of how citizens approach the survey interview, to a discussion of how individuals come to form and then to express opinions on political matters in the context of such an interview, to an examination of public opinion in three broad policy areas--race, social welfare, and war. He concludes that "don't know" responses are often the result of a systematic process that serves to exclude particular interests from the realm of recognized public opinion. Thus surveys may then echo the inegalitarian shortcomings of other forms of political participation and even introduce new problems altogether

How can we best gauge the political opinions of the citizenry? Since their emergence in the 1930s, opinion polls—or surveys—have become the dominant way to assess the public will. But even given the long history of polling, there is no agreement among political scientists on how to best measure public opinion through polls. This article is a call for political scientists to be more self-conscious about the choices we make when we attempt to measure public opinion with surveys in two realms. I first take up the question of whom to interview, discussing the major challenges survey researchers face when sampling respondents from the population of interest. I then discuss the level of specificity with which we can properly collect information about the political preferences of individuals. I focus on the types of question wording and item aggregation strategies researchers can use to accurately measure public opinion.

This article explores belief in political rumors surrounding the health care reforms enacted by Congress in 2010. Refuting rumors with statements from unlikely sources can, under certain circumstances, increase the willingness of citizens to reject rumors regardless of their own political predilections. Such source credibility effects, while well known in the political persuasion literature, have not been applied to the study of rumor. Though source credibility appears to be an effective tool for debunking political rumors, risks remain. Drawing upon research from psychology on 'fluency' – the ease of information recall – this article argues that rumors acquire power through familiarity. Attempting to quash rumors through direct refutation may facilitate their diffusion by increasing fluency. The empirical results find that merely repeating a rumor increases its power.