The politicization of attitudes towards misinformation: how ideology shapes epistemic beliefs, normative judgments, and policy support

Misinformation poses an important challenge for democracy, yet political debates appear to have polarized citizens’ perceptions and responses to misinformation. In a first experiment administered during the 2021 Canadian federal election, respondents were asked how acceptable it is for politicians to spread false information on climate change and COVID-19 for randomly assigned purposes. While most citizens considered misinformation unacceptable, opposing government action on these issues and having a right-wing ideology were associated with greater tolerance. I investigate these ideological differences further using observational and experimental data collected during the 2022 Quebec provincial election. I demonstrate that right-wing citizens are less likely to believe in the existence of an impartial truth, more indifferent to misinformation, and less supportive of measures to combat it than left-wing citizens. These patterns may partly reflect perceptions on the right that public discourses about misinformation are biased against them. The findings suggest that combatting misinformation has become a negatively valenced concept on the right and highlight how the politicization of misinformation debates can influence our ability to respond to it.