Quote (balrog66 @ Aug 28 2020 03:15pm)
In the study, 1,185 respondents nationwide were asked about what news sources theyconsumedin the past week and then were asked a variety ofquestions about current political and economic eventsin the U.S. and abroad. On average, people were able to answer correctly 1.8 of4 questions about international news, and 1.6 of5 questions about domestic affairs.“Of course, knowledge of current events is predicted not just by watching news, but also by factors like ideology, education, age and gender,” said Dan Cassino, political scientist and poll analyst. “Based on these results, people who don’t watch any news at all are expected to answer correctly on average 1.22 of the questions about domestic politics, just by guessing or relying on existing basic knowledge.”However, the study concludes that media sources have a significant impact on the number of questions that people were able to answer correctly. The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News wouldbe expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly—a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all.On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR,they wouldbe expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching onlyThe Daily Show with Jon Stewartcouldanswer about 1.42questions correctly
-tl;dr- People who get their information from Fox do worse at answering simple questions on domestic political news than people who don't watch media at all.
.5 questions is barely one standard deviation. What a shit pseudoscience study.