Sharp as a Fox: Are foxnews.com Visitors Less Politically Knowledgeable?

• Author: Peter R. Licari
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X20915222
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X20915222

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(6) 792 –806

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X20915222

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Article

Introduction

In 2012, researchers at Farleigh Dickinson University shocked

the political world with a startling claim about watching the

Fox News Network and political knowledge. Not only did

viewers of America’s most mainstream conservative cable

news network know less about politics than those watching

other news channels, they purportedly knew less than people

who did not watch the news at all (Cassino et al., 2012). It

reinforced a smaller study fielded by the same researchers in

2011 finding that Fox News viewers in New Jersey were less

likely to know about the ousting of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt

than those New Jerseyans who avoided cable news (Cassino

& Woolley, 2011). These findings went viral and were later

reinforced in a paper by economic historian and former offi-

cial in the Bush and Reagan administrations, Bruce Bartlett.

Bartlett (2015) analyzed prior public opinion polling to claim

“a number of surveys have found Fox views [sic] to be less

well informed and more likely to have factually untrue beliefs

than those who receive their news from mainstream sources”

(p. 12) further arguing that this contributes to conservatives’

“self-brainwashing” (p. 21). Consequently, among many

(especially liberal) discussants, the notion that Fox viewers

are politically ignorant has been increasingly seen as unim-

peachably true. It is commonly invoked during on and offline

political conversations, often in conjunction with claims that

the network is acting as a propagandistic arm of the Republican

party.

But closer inspection shows that this ostensibly solid fact

is riddled with cracks. None of the aforementioned sources,

nor those reviewed by Bartlett (2015), controlled for factors

that could influence both political knowledge and cable news

consumption such as age, education, or income. In addition,

the questions that constituted “knowledge” largely tended to

focus around current statistics (unemployment), current

events (the Keystone XL pipeline), and beliefs in conspiracy

theories (President Obama being born in Kenya). Although

important, these do not represent all kinds of political knowl-

edge out there (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Hollander,

2014; Jennings, 1996; Jerit & Barabas, 2012; Lupia, 2016).

Furthermore, it is not at all clear whether these results are

limited to Fox’s cable programming or if it extends to their

online news as well. Considering that roughly a third of

Americans prefer to get their news from online sources—a

915222APRXXX10.1177/1532673X20915222American Politics ResearchLicari

research-article2020

1University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

Corresponding Author:

Peter R. Licari, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

Email: prlicari13@gmail.com

Sharp as a Fox: Are foxnews.com

Visitors Less Politically Knowledgeable?

Peter R. Licari1

Abstract

In 2012, a survey research was publicized suggesting that Fox News viewers were not only less informed than consumers

of other news media but also less informed than people abstaining from news media entirely. Many have taken this to

be unequivocally true and the study remains popular among political discussants to this day. However, virtually all of the

investigations used to advance the argument focus on current events type knowledge and neglect important controls that

could influence both political knowledge and Fox News consumption. Furthermore, no research to date has investigated

any effects stemming from consuming the network’s online content (i.e., from foxnews.com). This article aims to contribute

these gaps. Using the 2016 American National Election Survey (ANES), I investigate whether consuming content from

foxnews.com is associated with decreased political knowledge. I find no differences in knowledge concerning how the U.S.

political system works (what I call process-related knowledge) but do find a significant, negative relationship between visiting

foxnews.com and facts about society writ large (what I call society-oriented knowledge). These effects persist even when

controlling for party, ideology, and conservative-group affinity and in the preponderance of matching procedures employed

to reduce concerns of self-selection. Implications and avenues of future research are also discussed.

Keywords

political knowledge, political communication, Fox News, media effects