In the News: Emily Thorson

Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, recently published “The Invented State: Policy Misperceptions in the American Public” (Oxford University Press, 2024).

"The more politicized a misperception is, the more it's tied up with someone's party identity, the more likely it is to be a product of people's political attitudes rather than something that affects those attitudes," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science.

Entitled “Like-minded Sources on Facebook Are Prevalent but Not Polarizing” and co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Emily Thorson, this groundbreaking research published in Nature uses an on-platform experiment to examine what happens when Facebook users see dramatically less content from people who share their political leanings.

"Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing," co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Emily Thorson, was published in Nature. The study is focused on the prevalence and effects of "echo chambers" on social media.

"Misperceptions about Refugee Policy," co-authored by political science professors Lamis Abdelaaty and Emily Thorson, was published in American Political Science Review.

Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, and her co-author write about their takeaways from the 2020 Presidential elections, including the long-lasting impact of high voter turnout, the importance of candidate attributes even amidst partisan polarization, and the continued significance of survey research in understanding voting patterns and voter behavior.

“Misconceptions about a particular policy, these are pretty common,” says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, about falsehoods about policies for an article for the CT Mirror.

"Corrections of misinformation are constantly being amplified," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science. People are trying to do something good by correcting the misinformation but in the process they're "pushing it out to more people and potentially causing more belief echoes to arise."

Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, defines "belief echoes" as "effects on attitudes that persist even when you know that a piece of information is false."

"I’d argue that much of the dysfunction we see in online interactions is just a symptom of much larger and older social problems, including but not limited to racism and misogyny," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science.

According to Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, negative misinformation about a politician of an opposing party is hard to shake, even after people learn that the original story was false.

"Most people are not being inundated with fake news," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science. "That is not to say that this isn’t a problem, but I don’t think this is the magnitude of a problem that people often think it is."

"My sense is that he's relying on some stock phrases that he pulls out again and again, especially when he's called on to make a statement about an issue that perhaps he hasn't done a lot of research on or doesn't have a lot of information on," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science. 

According to Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, it's difficult to separate non-football issues—such as politics, concussions, cord-cutting and other unknown factors—from the events on the field.

Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, found that relatively simple corrections could reduce some misperceptions by as much as 20 percentage points or more.

Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) for the Central Time segment "How To Spot And Fight Fake News." Thorson advises people to be wary of spreading fake news just to correct it. "It's hard to . . . unring that bell of misinformation," she says.