Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics
通过2017年法国总统选举期间的随机在线实验，研究了事实核查在对抗政客误导性言论（另类事实）方面的效果，发现事实核查能提升选民知识但不改变政策立场或候选人支持度。
How effective is fact checking in countervailing “alternative facts,” i.e., misleading statements by politicians? In a randomized online experiment during the 2017 French presidential election campaign, we subjected subgroups of 2480 French voters to alternative facts by the extreme-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, and/or corresponding facts about the European refugee crisis from official sources. We find that: (i) alter- native facts are highly persuasive; (ii) fact checking improves factual knowledge of voters (iii) but it does not affect policy conclusions or support for the candidate; (iv) exposure to facts alone does not decrease support for the candidate, even though voters update their knowledge. We argue that the main channel is that fact checking increases the salience of the immigration issue.