ADDITIONAL READINGS
These are readings that may be useful for assignments, or for future work. They are not required, but you may find them useful.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and will be updated as the course goes on!
Introduction and Definitions
Tucker et al, 2018. “Social Media, Political Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature.” https://hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ Social-Media-Political-Polarization-and-Political-Disinformation-Literature-Review.pdf
Lazer et al. “The science of fake news.” Science 359 (6380), 1094-1096. https:// science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1094/tab-pdf
Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Yu, C. (2019). “Trends in the diffusion of misinformation on social media.” Research & Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168019848554
Farrell, Henry. 2012. “The Consequences of the Internet for Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science, 15:35–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-030810-110815
Vosoughi et al. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science. 359, 1146– 1151. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146
Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich. 2018. RAND Report: Truth Decay. https:// www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html
Pennycook, Gordon and Rand, David G., Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking (May 23, 2018). http:// dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3023545
Gentzkow and Shapiro. 2011. Ideological Segregation Online and Offline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126, 1799–1839. doi:10.1093/qje/qjr044.
Wardle, C., & Derakhshan, H. (2017). Information disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policy making. Council of Europe Report, September 27, 2017. https://rm.coe.int/information-disorder-toward-an-interdisciplinary-framework- for-researc/168076277c. Measuring the reach of "fake news" and online disinformation in Europe. Oxford Reuters Factsheet. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/measuring- reach-fake-news-and-online-disinformation-europe
Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Andrei Shleifer. 2005. “The Market for News.” American Economic Review 95(4): 1031–53.
Fake News May Have Limited Effects Beyond Increasing Beliefs in False Claims: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/fake-news-limited-effects-on-political- participation/
Historical Misinformation
Lapham's Quarterly Special Issue: A History of Fake News. 2018. https:// store.laphamsquarterly.us/merchandise/fake-news
Parkinson, Robert. “Fake news? That’s a very old story.” Washington Post, November 25, 2016. http://wapo.st/2fx6KkQ?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.bdb0350c5451
Stepman, Jarret. "The History of Fake News in the United States.” Daily Signal. Link: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/01/01/the-history-of-fake-news-in-the-united- states/
The Phaedrus, by Plato. Full text here, (pay particular attention 274c-275b): http:// classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html
Franklin, Benjamin. 1782. “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle” Passy, second edition. Accessed here: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/ Franklin/01-37-02-0132
Robert G. Parkinson. 2016. The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution. Chapter 5, “It is the Cause of Heaven Against Hell.”
Shear, Matthew. “Fighting the Nazis With Fake News,” Smithsonian Magazine. April 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fighting-nazis-fake- news-180962481/ Modern Misinformation
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Pages 1-31. https:// reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf
Pew Research Center: U.S. has changed in key ways in the past decade, from tech use to demographics. Dec 20, 2019. https://pewrsr.ch/35HxY2Y
Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Chang, E. P., & Pillai, R. (2014). The effects of subtle misinformation in news headlines. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20(4).
Munger, et al. "The (Null) Effect of Clickbait.” Conditionally Accepted, Public Opinion Quarterly. kmunger.github.io/pdfs/clickbait.pdf
Emily Van Duyn & Jessica Collier. “Priming and Fake News: The Effects of Elite Discourse on Evaluations of News Media.” https://doi.org/ 10.1080/15205436.2018.1511807
Coppock and Broockman, Working Paper 2018. “Summary Report: The Effectiveness of Online Ads: A Field Experiment.” https://alexandercoppock.com/ menu_working_papers.html
Settle, J. (2018). Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America (pp. 1-19). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108560573.001.
Jessica T. Feezell & Brittany Ortiz (2019) ‘I saw it on Facebook’: an experimental analysis of political learning through social media, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2019.1697340
Cacciatore, M; Sara K. Yeo, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos, Dominique Brossard, Elizabeth A. Corley ”Is Facebook Making Us Dumber? Exploring Social Media Use as a Predictor of Political Knowledge.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95:2, 404-4. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699018770447
Young Mie Kim, Jordan Hsu, David Neiman, Colin Kou, Levi Bankston, Soo Yun Kim, Richard Heinrich, Robyn Baragwanath & Garvesh Raskutti. 2018. “The Stealth Media? Groups and Targets behind Divisive Issue Campaigns on Facebook,” Political Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2018.1476425 Political Behavior
, Florian Foos Lyubomir Kostadinov, and Nikolay Marinov. “Does Social Media Promote Civic Activism? A Field Experiment with a Civic Campaign,” Working Paper 2018. http://www.florianfoos.net/resources/Foos_et_al_SocialMedia.pdf
Flynn, DJ; Nyhan, B, and Reifler, J. 2017. “The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics.” Advances in Political Psychology, 38:1. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12394
Manjoo, F. (2013). You won’t finish this article. Slate Magazine, June 6, 2013. Retrieved May 23, 2017, from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/ how_people_read_online_why_you_won_t_finish_this_article.html.
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2017). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https:// papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2958246.
Guess, et al. 2018. Avoiding the Echo Chamber About Echo Chambers. Knight Foundation Brief.
Pennycook, Gordon and Rand, David G., “Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking ,”(May 23, 2018). http:// dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3023545
D.J. Flynn and Yanna Krupnikov. 2018. “Misinformation and the Justification of Socially Undesirable Preferences. “Journal of Experimental Political Science. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/XPS.2018.12
Barbera, P. “How Social Media Reduces Mass Political Polarization. Evidence from Germany, Spain, and the U.S.” Working Paper 2016.
Eady et al. Working Paper 2018. “Measuring How Many People are in Media Bubbles on Twitter.” https://s18798.pcdn.co/smapp/wp-content/uploads/sites/1693/2018/04/ smapp_Twitter_Bubbles_march24.pdf
Elizabeth Dubois & Grant Blank. (2018). “The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media.” Information, Communication & Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656 Fact Checking and Backfire Effect
Wood, Thomas and Porter, Ethan. 2018. “The elusive backfire effect: mass attitudes’ steadfast factual adherence.” https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y
Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions.” Political Behavior, 32:303–330. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11109-010-9112-2
Nyhan, B. and Reifler, J. 2015. “The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators." American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 59:3.
Pingree RJ, Watson B, Sui M, Searles K, Kalmoe NP, Darr JP, et al. (2018) Checking facts and fighting back: Why journalists should defend their profession. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0208600. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208600
“Expert organizations can be effective in correcting health misinformation on social media.” http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/10/26/expert-organizations-can-be- effective-in-correcting-health-misinformation-on-social-media/
Daniel J. Hopkins, John Sides, and Jack Citrin, "The Muted Consequences of Correct Information about Immigration," The Journal of Politics 81, no. 1 (January 2019): 315-320. https://doi.org/10.1086/699914
Holman, M and Lay. C. 2018. “They See Dead People Voting Correcting Misperceptions about Voter Fraud in the 2016 U S Presidential Election.” Journal of Political Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2018.1478656
Thorson, E. (2016). “Belief echoes: The persistent effects of corrected misinformation. “Political Communication, 33(3), 460–480. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10584609.2015.1102187
Porter, E., Wood, T. J., & Kirby, D. (2018). “Sex trafficking, Russian infiltration, birth certificates, and pedophilia: A survey experiment correcting fake news.” Journal of Experimental Political Science, 5(2), 159–164. https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2017.32
"Study: Watching Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News.” Michael Kelley for Slate, January 30, 2014. http://www.slate.com/blogs/ business_insider/2014/01/30/ does_watching_fox_news_make_you_less_informed.html 2016 Election
Guess, Nyhan and Reifler. Working Paper 2018. “Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 31, Number 2—Spring 2017— Pages 211–236
Mason, Lilliana. 2016. “A Cross Cutting Calm: How Social Sorting Drives Affective Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw001
Guess, Nyhan and Reifler. Working Paper 2018. “You’re Fake News!” Findings from the Poynter Media Trust Survey.
Guess, Nyhan and Reifler. “Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 U.S. election”. Forthcoming, Nature Human Behaviour.
Faris, Robert and Roberts, Hal and Etling, Bruce and Bourassa, Nikki and Zuckerman, Ethan and Benkler, Yochai, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (August 2017). Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 2017-6. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3019414
Christopher A. Bail, Brian Guay, Emily Maloney, Aidan Combs, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Friedolin Merhout, Deen Freelon, Alexander Volfovsky. “Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jan 2020, 117 (1) 243-250; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906420116 Challenges to Democracy
Norris, P. (2019). Do perceptions of electoral malpractice undermine democratic satisfaction? The US in comparative perspective. International Political Science Review, 40(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118806783
Tucker, et al. (2017). “From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy.” Journal of Democracy, Volume 28, Number 4. https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/ articles/from-liberation-to-turmoil-social-media-and-democracy/
Reporters Without Borders. Online resource. https://rsf.org/en
Isabella Hansen & Darren J. Lim (2018): “Doxing democracy: influencing elections via cyber voter interference,” Contemporary Politics. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13569775.2018.1493629
US Senate Report. Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for US National Security. Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate. 115th Congress, Second Session, January 18, 2018.
Helmus et al. “Russian Social Media Influence: Understanding Russian Propaganda in Eastern Europe,”RAND Corporation, 2018. https://www.rand.org/pubs/ research_reports/RR2237.html.
"Elites Tweet to Get Feet Off the Streets: Measuring Regime Response to Protest Using Social Media" (with Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker). Political Science Research & Methods 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2018.
Ferrara, Emilio, Disinformation and Social Bot Operations in the Run Up to the 2017 French Presidential Election (June 30, 2017). First Monday 22(8) - August 7, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2995809
BBC News: Macron Leaks: the anatomy of a hack. Megha Mohan. 9 May 2017. https:// www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39845105
Marco Bastos and Dan Mercea. “The Public Accountability of Social Platforms: Lessons from a Study on Bots and Trolls in the Brexit Campaign.” Forthcoming, Philosophical Transactions. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2018.0003 India’s ‘Fake News’ Crackdown Crumbles Over Journalists’ Outrage. Kai Schultz and Suhasini Raj for the New York Times, April 3, 2018.
In WhatsApp, fake news is fast — and can be fatal.” Elizabeth Dwoskin and Annie Gowen for the Washington Post, July 23, 2018.
Pew Research Center: Publics in Emerging Economies Worry Social Media Sow Division, Even as They Offer New Chances for Political Engagement. May 13, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/05/13/publics-in-emerging-economies- worry-social-media-sow-division-even-as-they-offer-new-chances-for-political- engagement/
Non-Democratic Regimes
Shanthi Kalathil Taylor C. Boas. Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule
Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E Roberts. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review, 107, 2 (May), Pp. 1-18. Copy at http://j.mp/2nxNUhk
Authoritarian Audiences and Government Rhetoric in International Crises: Evidence from China. Jessica Weiss and Allan Dafoe. Working Paper 2018. http:// www.jessicachenweiss.com/work-in-progress.html
Brendan Nyhan and Thomas Zeitzoff, "Conspiracy and Misperception Belief in the Middle East and North Africa," The Journal of Politics 80, no. 4 (October 2018): 1400-1404. https://doi.org/10.1086/698663
Documentary: Under the Sun https://www.npr.org/2016/07/08/484945860/the-making-of-a-propaganda-film-in- under-the-sun https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/22/asia/north-korea-propaganda/index.html Free Speech and Internet Rights
Nigel Warburton. 2009. Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Press.
Cass Sunstein. 2018. #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media. Princeton University Press.
Human Rights in the Age of Platforms. 2019. Edited by Rikke Frank Jørgensen. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/human-rights-age-platforms
McElwee et al. Why Democrats Should Embrace ‘Internet for All’ | The Nation. https:// www.thenation.com/article/democrats-embrace-internet/
Sensational Statistics
Charles Wheelan. 2017. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread From the Data. W. W. Norton & Company 2014
Darrell Huff. 1993. How to Lie with Statistics. W. W. Norton & Company.
Alberto Cairo, 2019. How Charts Lie. W. W. Norton & Company 2014 Policy Solutions
Stanford History Education Group https://sheg.stanford.edu/projects
Clayton, K., Blair, S., Busam, J.A. et al. Real Solutions for Fake News? Measuring the Effectiveness of General Warnings and Fact-Check Tags in Reducing Belief in False Stories on Social Media. Polit Behav (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11109-019-09533-0
Munger, Kevin. 2017. “Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: Experimentally Reducing Racist Harassment.” Political Behavior 39:629–649.
Atkins, L. (2017). States should require schools to teach media literacy to combat fake news. The Huffington Post, July 13, 2017. Retrieved July 8, 2018, from https:// www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/states-should-require-schools-to-teach-media- literacy_us_59676573e4b07b5e1d96ed86.
Emily K. Vraga & Leticia Bode (2018) I do not believe you: how providing a source corrects health misperceptions across social media platforms, Information, Communication & Society, 21:10, 1337-1353, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1313883
Pennycock, G and Rand, D. Crowdsourcing judgments of news source quality. Working Paper 2018.
Wojdynski et al. 2017. Building a Better Native Advertising Disclosure. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 17:2, 150–161.
Scott Williamson. (2019) Countering Misperceptions to Reduce Prejudice: An Experiment on Attitudes toward Muslim Americans. Journal of Experimental Political Science 24, pages 1-12.
Leticia Bode & Emily K. Vraga (2018) See Something, Say Something: Correction of Global Health Misinformation on Social Media, Health Communication, 33:9, 1131-1140, DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2017.1331312