People have a special ability to detect and disseminate information about egotistic and selfish leaders. In this way, citizens contribute greatly to the proliferation of voter apathy and mistrust of politicians, according to a new study from Aarhus BSS at Aarhus University.
20.10.2020 | INGRID FOSSUM
Hardly a day goes by without the American media writing about Donald Trump’s taxes or other negative stories about him and other politicians. In the US, the media focuses intensely on personal-interest stories and the path to power of politicians, rather than on the content and purpose of political policy. In Denmark too, we see media focusing on political spin, re-election strategies and branding rather than on solutions to issues and the social utility of policy. As a consequence, confidence in politicians is impaired.
However, new research from Aarhus BSS at Aarhus University shows that the crisis of trust that we see in many Western democracies is not just attributable to media news values and their internal prioritisation of personal-interest stories. Citizens play a significant role in the particularly rapid spread of these types of articles at the expense of more positive stories.
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Citizens exaggerate
"People are better at retaining information about selfish politicians and are better at, and more motivated to, forward that type of information to other people compared to information that focuses on political substance," explains Troels Bøggild, associate professor in political science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University.
"This is because there is an inherent bias in human memory that affects the type of political information we pass on in our social network. This means that citizens are part of exaggerating the problem of selfish politicians," he continues.
Troels Bøggild is the lead author of the study, "Citizens as Complicits: Distrust in Politicians and Biased Social Dissemination of Political Information ", which has just been published in the renowned journal American Political Science Review. Associate Professor Lene Aarøe and Professor Michael Bang Petersen from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, are co-authors of the study.
"When negative information about politicians is overrepresented, people who receive it second and third hand will also have less trust in those politicians and support their political decisions to a lesser extent. That’s the crux of it."
Troels Bøggild, ph.d., associate professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus BSS
Gossip lives on
The conclusions of the study are based on a number of internet-based experiments using a representative sample of 3,353 participants in the US. The experiments were carried out in the form of a telephone game. The participants in the first group read an entire news article, which they then recounted to the next group, who then recounted it to another group. Only the information considered important survives such treatment.
"We can also see that mistrust spreads. When negative information about politicians is overrepresented, people who receive it second and third hand will also have less trust in those politicians and support their political decisions to a lesser extent. That’s the crux of it," says Troels Bøggild.
"We observed what information is passed on through the information chains when people tell each other things based on news articles. People pick up and communicate more about strategy and the selfish behaviour of politicians than the political content itself," says Troels Bøggild. He continues:
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An old survival mechanism
According to Troels Bøggild and his colleagues Lene Aarøe and Michael Bang Petersen, this innate psychological tendency stems from the history of human development, where it was an evolutionary advantage to pay particular attention to leaders who lined their own pockets at the expense of the community.
"At that time, there were no formal control bodies to keep leaders in check, so this was people’s way of protecting themselves against authoritarian leaders and non-cooperative behaviour," says Troels Bøggild.
The researchers are now applying this to a political context, and linking it to possible negative consequences for political discourse. Negative news about politicians in the media and among the population lowers our confidence in politicians and increases opposition to their policies. The behaviour of politicians, the news values of media, and the level of attention citizens pay to politicians who abuse their position of power to promote their own interests, are all key ingredients in this dynamic.
"Our research explains why personal-interest stories about the apparent abuse of power by politicians are so detrimental to them. The stories become rooted in the minds of citizens and we are more motivated to share them with others. They don’t simply fade away," says Lene Aarøe, associate professor in political science.
An extra megaphone
Internet and social media mean we can spread negative news faster and further afield than ever before.
"When we get the impression that leaders are abusing their power, we react and tell others. We mobilise a collective defence. Together we are stronger than the leader. This is why personal-interest stories flourish on social media these days, as we have an extra megaphone that we can use to shout our indignation,” says Michael Bang Petersen, professor of political science.
However, the researchers also underline that the attention people give to personal-interest stories is not necessarily an issue. Together with the media, vigilant citizens can prevent corrupt politicians from coming to power.
Facts:Read the article: “Citizens as Complicits: Distrust in Politicians and Biased Social Dissemination of Political Information.” (American Political Science Review) |