The Liar's Dividend: How Misinformation About Misinformation Affects Politician Support and Trust in Media Kaylyn Jackson Schiff,∗ Daniel Schiff,† and Nat´aliaS. Bueno‡ This version: October 23, 2020 Abstract This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians \crying wolf" over fake news. While previous work has addressed the direct effects of misinformation, we focus on indirect effects and argue that strategic and false allegations that stories are fake news or deepfakes benefit politicians by helping them maintain support in the face of information damaging to their reputation. We posit that this concept, known as the \liar's dividend," works through two theoretical chan- nels: by injecting informational uncertainty into the media environment that upwardly biases evaluations of the politician, or by providing rhetorical cover which supports motivated reasoning by core supporters. To evaluate these potential impacts of the liar's dividend, we use a survey experiment to randomly assign vignette treatments detailing hypothetical politician responses to real embarrassing or scandalous stories. We employ a 2x2x3 factorial design (politician partisanship x media format x politician response) and assess impacts on belief in the stories and support for the politicians. Our results reveal the extent to which misinformation about misinformation pays off. Keywords: misinformation, survey experiment, deepfakes, fake news, trust, media ∗Ph.D. Student, Department of Political Science, Emory University, kaylyn.jackson.schiff@emory.edu †Ph.D. Student, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, schiff@gatech.edu ‡Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Emory University,
[email protected] Contents 1 Introduction3 2 A Theory of the Liar's Dividend5 2.1 Hypotheses ...................................