The Safest Time to Fly: Pandemic Response in the Era of Fox News

Ananyev, Maxim; Poyker, Michael; Tian, Yuan

Abstract

We document a causal effect of the conservative Fox News Channel in the United States on physical distancing during COVID-19 pandemic. We measure county-level mobility covering all U.S. states and District of Columbia produced by GPS pings to 15-17 million smartphones and zip-code-level mobility using Facebook location data. Using the historical position of Fox News Channel in the cable lineup as the source of exogenous variation, we show that increased exposure to Fox News led to a smaller reduction in distance traveled and a smaller increase in the probability of staying home after the national emergency declaration in the United States. Our results show that slanted media can have a harmful effect on containment efforts during a pandemic by affecting people's behaviour.

Citation

Ananyev, M., Poyker, M., & Tian, Y. (2021). The Safest Time to Fly: Pandemic Response in the Era of Fox News. Journal of Population Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00847-0

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 25, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Apr 24, 2021
• Publication Date: Apr 24, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 26, 2021
• Journal: Journal of Population Economics
• Print ISSN: 0933-1433
• Electronic ISSN: 1432-1475
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00847-0
• Keywords: Mobility; Media Bias; Fox News; COVID-19 JEL codes: D1; D7; I31; Z13
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5496072
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00847-0