The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why the "Death Panel" Myth Wouldn't Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate
Abstract
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama struggled to overcome widespread and persistent myths about their proposals to reform the American health care system. Their difficulties highlight the influence of factual misinformation in national politics and the extent to which it correlates with citizens' political views. In this essay, I explain how greater elite polarization and the growth in media choice have reinforced the partisan divide in factual beliefs. To illustrate these points, I analyze debates over health care reform in 19931994 and 20092010, tracing the spread of false claims about reform proposals from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and analyzing the prevalence of misinformation in public opinion. Since false beliefs are extremely difficult to correct, I conclude by arguing that increasing the reputational costs for dishonest elites might be a more effective approach to improving democratic discourse.
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Cites
The case for motivated reasoning.
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Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs
Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00214.x · Cited by 4,344
Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use
Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009) · Journal of Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x · Cited by 1,940
Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure
Stroud, N. J. (2008) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-007-9050-9 · Cited by 1,154
A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments.
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How warnings about false claims become recommendations
Skurnik, I., Yoon, C., Park, D. C., & Schwarz, N. (2005) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/426605 · Cited by 446
Schwarz, N., Sanna, L. J., Skurnik, I., & Yoon, C. (2007) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(06)39003-x · Cited by 441
Cited by
Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/1529100612451018 · Cited by 2,920
Understanding Conspiracy Theories
Douglas, K. M., Uscinski, J. E., Sutton, R. M., Cichocka, A., Nefes, T., Ang, C. S., & Deravi, F. (2019) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12568 · Cited by 1,511
Tucker, J. A., Guess, A., Barbera, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D., & Nyhan, B. (2018) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3144139 · Cited by 1,222
Self-citationThe Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics
Flynn, D. J., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2017) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12394 · Cited by 1,183
Self-citationDebunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation
Chan, M.-P. S., Jones, C. R., Hall Jamieson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2017) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797617714579 · Cited by 898
Metadata
- Authors
- Nyhan, B.
- Venue
- The Forum
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2010-04-27
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 1540-8884 (ISSN-L)
- 2194-6183
- OpenAlex
- W2000896298
- Cited by
- 202
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 28.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
