From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by U.S. politicians

Abstract

The spread of online misinformation on social media is increasingly perceived as a problem for societal cohesion and democracy. The role of political leaders in this process has attracted less research attention, even though politicians who "speak their mind" are perceived by segments of the public as authentic and honest even if their statements are unsupported by evidence. Analyzing communications by members of the U.S. Congress on Twitter between 2011 and 2022, we show that politicians' conception of honesty has undergone a distinct shift, with authentic belief-speaking that may be decoupled from evidence becoming more prominent and more differentiated from explicitly evidence-based truth seeking. We show that for Republicans - but not Democrats - an increase of belief-speaking of 10% is associated with a decrease of 12.8 points of quality (NewsGuard scoring system) in the sources shared in a tweet. Conversely, an increase in truth-seeking language is associated with an increase in quality of sources for both parties. The results support the hypothesis that the current dissemination of misinformation in political discourse is in part driven by an alternative understanding of truth and honesty that emphasizes invocation of subjective belief at the expense of reliance on evidence.