“A few years back, there was a poll that suggested Fox News viewers were less knowledgeable on important issues than people who abstained from watching the news at all,” said study author Peter R. Licari, a PhD candidate at the University of Florida.

“I kept seeing people referencing it on social media but noticed that: 1) It was only about TV news when a lot of news nowadays is consumed over the Internet; and 2) The analysis didn’t control for factors that might influence both Fox News viewership and lower political knowledge.”

“I was originally pretty skeptical of the claim — and I came into the research with that skepticism in hand. For one, there are many different kinds of ‘political knowledge,’ so an all-encompassing effect suggested by headlines and people’s conversational references to the study seemed too over-the-top — and news consumption tends to be positively correlated with political knowledge in general,” Licari explained.

“I realized I knew of a dataset where I could address these issues. […]