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 | Dauphine, A409 |
Paying Not to Know: News Avoidance in Times of War
Coverage of violent conflicts varies enormously across the sides of the conflict, potentially resulting in opposing parties holding sharply different beliefs about the facts of the conflict. We study Israelis and Jordanians during the 2023-2025 Gaza war, asking whether individuals avoid news about civilian victims from the out-group, and how such news would affect them if they were exposed to it. We present several key findings. First, Israeli Jews and Jordanian Arabs are substantially less willing to read about outgroup victims than ingroup victims. Second, news avoidance is driven less by instrumental considerations or universal affective factors, and more by social identity and group norms. Third, reading about outgroup victims increases knowledge, fosters empathy toward the outgroup, and affects policy positions. Fourth, these effects also arise among individuals who would rather avoid such news. Together, our results suggest that avoidance of news about outgroup victims contributes to disagreements about facts and inter-group animosity, and may exacerbate conflict.
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