News consumption and voting behavior are interlinked and particularly important in elections where traditional political cleavages are not easily applicable. This relationship becomes more complex and uncertain in contexts of low trust in the news media and high levels of misinformation circulating in different news ecosystems. In this study, we test an indirect path between differentiated news media consumption and voting choices, mediated by belief in misinformation, and moderated by news media trust. Our data come from a two-wave panel survey of 1,332 respondents, conducted in Chile before and after the 2022 Constitutional Referendum, a political event that captured international attention after a constitutional proposal was rejected in a process initiated with high public support. Our analyses found that news media consumption significantly affected voting preferences in the referendum, not only indirectly through the acceptance of misinformation, but also directly, suggesting that news organizations might act, intentionally or not, as soundboards of misinformation. These findings suggest that countries with enough press freedom to rely on the news media to be informed but also a high concentration of ownership, topics, and angles covered, might become fertile soil for misinformation to spread in the form of professional news coverage, instead of fabricated, easy-to-spot fake pieces circulating in dubious websites or on social media.

中文翻译：

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“你的房子将不再是你的了！”错误信息、新闻使用和媒体信任对智利宪法公投的影响


新闻消费和投票行为是相互关联的，在传统政治分裂不易应用的选举中尤为重要。在对新闻媒体的信任度低和不同新闻生态系统中传播大量错误信息的背景下，这种关系变得更加复杂和不确定。在这项研究中，我们测试了差异化新闻媒体消费和投票选择之间的间接路径，该路径由对错误信息的信念介导，并由新闻媒体信任调节。我们的数据来自在 2022 年宪法公投前后在智利对 1,332 名受访者进行的两波小组调查，该政治事件在一项宪法提案在公众高度支持下启动的过程中被拒绝后引起了国际关注。我们的分析发现，新闻媒体的消费显著影响了公投中的投票偏好，不仅间接地通过接受错误信息，而且直接表明新闻机构可能有意或无意地充当错误信息的共鸣板。这些发现表明，拥有足够新闻自由的国家可以依赖新闻媒体获取信息，但所有权、主题和报道角度高度集中，可能会成为错误信息以专业新闻报道的形式传播的沃土，而不是在可疑网站或社交媒体上传播的捏造的、容易发现的假文章。