The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?

This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians "crying wolf" over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the "liar's dividend," may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.

本研究探讨了关于虚假信息的虚假信息现象，或政治家就虚假新闻“狼来了”的举动。策略性的虚假声明，声称故事为虚假新闻或深度伪造，可能通过帮助政治家在丑闻之后维持支持而使他们受益。我们提出，这种被称为“说谎者红利”的收益可能通过两位政治家的策略实现：通过引发信息不确定性或鼓励对立核心支持者的集结。我们对超过15,000名美国成年人进行了五项调查实验，详细描述了假设性政治家对描述真实政治家丑闻的故事的反应。我们发现，代表这两种策略的虚假信息声明在政党子群体中提高了政治家的支持度。这些策略对基于文本的丑闻报道有效，但主要对视频证据无效，并且并未降低对媒体的总体信任。最后，这些虚假声明为政治家带来的收益比其他应对丑闻的反应，如保持沉默或道歉，更为丰厚。