Pinocchio Politics: Citizen Perceptions of Political Disinformation and its Effects on Democratic Attitudes

Politicians across the world have regularly been accused of lying and spreading disinformation for personal political gain. While research on disinformation and fake news has increased, little research has focused on the perceptions and repercussions of political disinformation for trust in and attitudes toward democratic institutions. In this contribution we specifically ask: What is the effect of perceived lying and disinformation on trust in politicians and parties? Leveraging a citizen science approach—by means of a nationally representative panel diary (N ≈ 900)—we can examine unique and repeated in‑situ measurements of micro‑level perceptions and their attitudinal consequences across time. In this regard, we hypothesize that perceiving lies and/or disinformation by politicians decreases the general trust in politicians, and that the justifiability, acceptability and ideological distance between a perceived liar and a citizen affect this relationship. We will test these effects using different analyses at the level of respondents, respondents per week, and the reported perceived instances of disinformation. By embedding respondent and weekly fixed effects, the design isolates within‑person change and week‑specific shocks, reducing confounding from individual traits and temporal context. As political disinformation is a major topic of concern in many modern democracies, the findings have profound implications for understanding citizens’ views on political representation and representative democracy.