NO, REALLY, BLAME THE MEDIA — While we wait for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election to begin its prime-time hearing, we have new research looking more closely at why so many people believe the lie that the election was stolen. In short, it may be time for news outlets and their graphics departments to convene some hearings of their own. Researchers at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin interviewed 56 people who believed, falsely, that Trump most likely won the 2020 election. What they learned, in a paper shared first with Nightly : These people do not exist in “tightly sealed, right-wing echo chambers,” and a majority “did not seem to subscribe to multiple conspiracy theories.” Instead, “It appears that election night visuals were particularly powerful in cueing some people’s suspicions,” says the paper, written by Talia Stroud, a professor of communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Caroline Murray, a senior research associate at the university’s Center for Media Engagement, and Marley Duchovnay, a research associate there. It’s true that Trump had some unique things going for him in advancing his fraud. His portrayal of himself as a victim of the news media helped feed the idea that “actors on the left would go to extreme and illegal lengths to see that he was out of office,” according to the researchers. And the rally sizes that Trump cared so much about? They made a difference in how people viewed the outcome, too. Some people who believed Trump won had a hard time reconciling his large crowds with his losing vote total. But there was another factor that had nothing to do with Trump: how the lead on election night shifted from Trump to Joe Biden in some states as more ballots came in. Even though such shifts were expected — and explained by many traditional news outlets — the visuals on TV were difficult to overcome. Nightly spoke with Stroud and Murray about the people who believe Trump’s election lie, how susceptible the country may be to such falsehoods in a future election and what they think the news media should do about it. This conversation has been edited. Most people you spoke with don’t subscribe to other conspiracy theories. Why is the election lie so effective? Talia Stroud: I think it’s because it’s so popularly discussed. So many elite figures are making this claim that it adds perceived legitimacy that the election actually was stolen. Caroline Murray: I would add that this election in particular was actually more difficult to follow in real time than some elections in the past because there were new changes due to the pandemic. When people said, “I’ve never in my whole life experienced what happened in this election,” I think that that actually may be true. The newness and the unique circumstances that were present in 2020 did really open the door for people to be suspicious. How susceptible to a lie like this do you think people may be in future elections? Stroud: I think we’re really going to find out in 2022 and 2024, but I think there is a possibility that now that the groundwork has been laid and people think this is a possible narrative, that it’s actually going to be easier for those sorts of claims to take root. I think that there’s a good reason to be nervous about how this will play out in the future and a good reason for all of us to be attentive to the way in which we communicate. Do you get any sense from the interviews you’ve done that people could be persuaded that they believe in a lie? Murray: One of the things that made me a little bit hopeful after doing all of these interviews was that there are a lot of shades of belief here. Some people really believe this strongly and might be more susceptible to believing it again in future elections. But a lot of people were expressing uncertainty as they were sharing their thoughts with me, and they were saying that this felt so complicated to them. It felt like they didn’t have a media home, so to speak, someone that they could turn to that they felt would explain to them exactly what was happening in an in-depth way. They seem to want to seek out very detailed and perhaps very complex information about the election. Because they are invested and they are consuming a diverse set of sources in some cases, I do think there is room here at the very least. Is the news media contributing to the problem by showing vote totals as they trickle in? Murray: There’s some evidence that that was the case — that it might not be the best way to sustain trust in elections if you show the numbers and the mechanisms behind them go unexplained. I think that adding some context there, particularly around how different states count mail-in ballots, would’ve been really helpful. But lots of outlets did offer explanations for the shifts. If it’s getting missed, is there cause for a more drastic change in election night coverage? Stroud: I definitely think there is room for rethinking what election night coverage looks like. In this particular case, maybe not everyone is listening to it to hear that information. If they’re just looking at it visually, maybe there are ways to convey election results in better ways on air, and in print for that matter. Should we be reporting as 10 percent come in and 20 percent come in? I don’t know. I think that it’s worth having a conversation. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at dsiders@politico.com or on Twitter at @davidsiders.
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