Valuing free speech: elite cues make minimal impact on partisan American attitudes about speech regulation

Thesis

Why do Republicans and Democrats in the United States disagree about what type of content, including disinformation and hate speech, should be regulated online? Current explanations for partisan disagreement about disinformation regulation focus on the role of motivated reasoning, internalized preferences (such as moral values), or fact gaps—differences in perceptions about what is untrue—between political partisans. Yet, little, if any, work has been done to understand the impact of in-group elite, partisan cues on preferences for online speech regulation. This experimental study finds that elite cues do not cause consistent heterogeneous effects in shifting polarized partisan policy preferences. Through an experiment showing respondents hypothetical tweets by prominent elites aligned with their own or the opposing party, my findings shed light on the mechanisms driving public attitude formation. Specifically, American attitudes about free speech are durable to one-off elite cues, indicating that partisan divides in preferences for content moderation are likely to result from different sets of ideological preferences weighing the trade-off between individual liberty and collective wellbeing between Democrats and Republicans.

Authors: Berry, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-e97wa65nk
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: elite cues; polarization; regulation; online speech
• Subjects: Politics and government; Psychology; Law