Publications (peer-reviewed)
Debunking “fake news” on social media: Immediate and short-term effects of fact-checking and media literacy interventions
with Anna Kerkhof, Felix Mindl and Johannes Münster
[Open Access Publication] [Working Paper Version] [Policy Briefing]
Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 245, May 2025
We conduct a randomized survey experiment to compare the immediate and short-term effects of fact-checking to a brief media literacy intervention. We show that fact-checking primarily affects the specific fake news it directly addresses, whereas media literacy helps to distinguish between false and correct information more generally, both immediately and around two weeks after the intervention. A plausible mechanism is that media literacy enables participants to critically evaluate social media postings, while fact-checking fails to enhance their skills as much. Our results promote media literacy as an effective tool to fight fake news, that is cheap, scalable, and easy-to-implement.
Improving science literacy in the newsroom: Experimental evidence
with Anna Kerkhof and Nikola Noske
[Open Access Publication] [Working Paper Version]
PNAS Nexus, Volume 5, Issue 4, April 2026, pgag099
Accurate reporting of new findings is essential for an informed public, yet limited science literacy among journalists often results in misinterpretation of research, with costly societal and economic consequences. We developed a concise educational video that aimed to enhance journalists’ science literacy through explaining important checkpoints for sound research reporting (funding, sample, statistics, causal claims, and visuals). The impact of this video was tested in a survey experiment with 260 German journalists. Treated participants produced correct headlines for 64% of study-based news stories versus 36% in the control group (a 28-percentage-point rise, P < 0.001). They also became more skeptical when evaluating existing articles, flagging more potential mistakes. An exploratory follow-up using 268 real-world articles suggests a reduction in factual mistakes by treated journalists. Our findings highlight that a brief, low-cost intervention can measurably improve the scientific accuracy of journalism, offering a scalable strategy for news organizations and training programs.
Working Papers
How digital media markets amplify news sentiment
[Working Paper] (JMP)
This paper investigates how digital market incentives shape the emotional tone of news headlines and its consequences for information transmission. Using more than 330,000 articles from major German newspapers, online headlines are shown to be markedly more emotional and more negative than their print counterparts. Experiments with professional journalists demonstrate that stronger economic incentives to attract attention (through pay-per-click or subscription-based remuneration) causally induce more emotional and negative headline choices. Complementary reader experiments reveal that these attention-driven environments increase engagement, but impair the retrieval of factual information. Together, the findings document a market-based mechanism of media bias through which commercial incentives amplify emotional framing in news headlines and, in turn, diminish the accuracy of audience learning.
How Optimistic and Pessimistic Narratives Impact Financial Behavior: Experimental Evidence
with Sören Harrs and Bettina Rockenbach
[Working Paper]
Managers, analysts and politicians frequently communicate about the consequences of economic shocks using optimistic or pessimistic narratives. We provide causal evidence on the persuasive effects of such narratives on stock market expectations and financial behavior using two pre-registered experiments. Participants read naturalistic news articles featuring either optimistic or pessimistic narratives about the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic or AI. Pessimistic narratives reduce stock market expectations by 0.3 to 0.5 standard deviations in incentivized forecasting tasks. Moreover, exposure to pessimistic narratives can systematically increase risk aversion and reduce patience in incentivized choices, and induce strong emotional responses in the audience. Using our experimental data, we estimate persuasion rates from 17% to 41%, underscoring the relevance of narratives for managerial and financial communication. Complementary textual analysis of news articles shows that such narratives are pervasive in financial news and that their tone correlates with recent stock returns.
Policy Papers (no peer-review)
Digitale Medienmärkte: Was tun gegen Hassrede und Falschinformationen? (with Raphaela Andres) Wirtschaftsdienst 105(3) , 161-166, 2025.
Fake News in den sozialen Medien – was hilft? (with Anna Kerkhof, Felix Mindl and Johannes Münster) ECONtribute Policy Brief No. 039, 10/2022..
Selected Work in Progress
Upholding a good image: Selective country comparisons in the media (with Gönül Dogan and Louis Strang)
Information Acquisition on Digital Platforms: The Effect on Beliefs and Behavior (with Yero Ndiaye)
TeLL Me what’s going on – LLM use for news consumption (with Raphaela Andres)
Motivation
In my research I use various empirical methods and large datasets to tackle questions in the fields of political economy and applied microeconomics. My primary focus is the digitization of the news industry. This area is extremely interesting, because digitalized media markets are crucial for the future of democratic societies in many political and economic dimensions – they have the potential to shape worldviews of billions. With my work I want to improve our understanding of these markets and their relationships to the macroeconomy.
