Fans of entertainment programs easier to believe populists
A group of researchers from the University of London Queen Mary, University Pompeu Fabra and Bocconi University found that people who love entertainment TV shows, are more likely to vote for candidates of populist, according to a press release from the Queen Mary University.
In the study, scientists tracked the influence of entertainment programs on Italian television for 30 years. At this time in different regions of the country were phased based Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial television network Mediaset.
As the researchers found, the population of the areas where Mediaset appeared earlier (in 1985), approximately one percentage point more often vote for the party of Berlusconi, than people from regions where network is unfolded later. The pattern was traced for over two decades and five elections. Most strongly it affected the youth and the elderly, although through different mechanisms.
“Our results showed that children who frequently watched entertainment programs, have less developed cognitive skills, they are less involved in socio-political processes, when they grow up, and more receptive to the populist rhetoric of Berlusconi. People of the older generation start to watch entertainment programs, and then fall under the influence of political news on the same channels,” — said one of the authors, an economist at the University of London Queen Mary Andrea Tesei.
The difference in voting results between the two groups in different regions is 8-10 percentage points.