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Tailoring the truth – evidence on parliamentarians’ responsiveness and misinformation toleration from a field experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2023

Matthias Diermeier Open the ORCID record for Matthias Diermeier [Opens in a new window]
Matthias Diermeier*
Affiliation:
German Economic Institute, Cologne, Germany
*
*E-mail: diermeier@iwkoeln.de
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Abstract

Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) claim to be particularly responsive to people’s needs and have been identified as a major source of disinformation. The present contribution sets up a field experiment to zoom in on one-to-one communication between voters and their parliamentarians. By drawing on pieces of misinformation that are present among different parties’ supporters, artificial citizen’s requests are sent to all 2503 German federal parliamentarians. In fact, PRRP politicians do not turn out to be more responsive and they are by far more reluctant to reject misinformation. In contrast, parliamentarians of all other parties largely object to misinformation, even if it matches their political positions and is shared by their electorates. In opposition to PRRP politicians who reveal signs of vote-seeking behaviour, established parties’ communication behaviour indicates a high degree of intrinsic motivation.

Keywords

populist radical right partiesmisinformationdisinformationexperimentfake newsresponsiveness

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Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 2023 , pp. 332 - 352
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

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