How 'Fake News' Claims Let Politicians Escape Accountability

🧭 What Was Studied

This study examines “misinformation about misinformation” — the phenomenon of politicians falsely labeling reports as fake news or deepfakes to deflect blame after a scandal. The resulting benefit to politicians is called the "liar's dividend." Two distinct strategies are analyzed:

• Invoking informational uncertainty: casting doubt on whether the story is true or accurately reported.
• Encouraging oppositional rallying: mobilizing core supporters to dismiss the report as partisan attack.

🧪 How the evidence was gathered

Five survey experiments were administered to more than 15,000 American adults. Respondents read hypothetical politician responses tied to stories that described real politician scandals and then reported changes in support for the politician.

🔑 Key findings

• Claims that a story is misinformation (including deepfake allegations) raise politician support across partisan subgroups.
• Both informational-uncertainty and oppositional-rally strategies produce these increases in support.
• These strategies are effective when scandals are reported in text, but are largely ineffective when the scandal is accompanied by video evidence.
• False claims of misinformation do not measurably reduce general trust in media.
• Claiming misinformation produces a larger boost in politician support than alternative responses such as remaining silent or issuing an apology.

📌 Why it matters

Politicians can strategically weaponize allegations of fake news to blunt accountability, particularly when scandals exist only in textual form. The format of evidence (text versus video) constrains this "liar's dividend," and the finding that such claims out-perform silence or apology has direct implications for political communication, media strategy, and efforts to preserve accountability in democratic systems.