Job Market Paper

Who Should Know What and Why? Curated Supply of Political Information

Early Draft (Experiment 2 in the field)

The information environment can be distorted not only by the spread of falsehoods but also by the selective supply of truths. I study how citizens decide which accurate information others receive based on political alignment. In a pre-registered experiment with 1,200 U.S. adults, senders decide whether to share verified immigration statistics with receivers who hold inaccurate beliefs. Senders provide accurate information at high rates (above 80%), but are approximately 8 percentage points more likely to share facts aligned with their political position than facts that contradict it—even when receivers do not take a downstream political action in the experiment. This selectivity approximately doubles when receivers make a political decision, with the amplification operating primarily through withholding of unaligned information. The interpretation of my framework is that baseline selectivity reflects a preference for belief congruence, while its amplification under political action is consistent with an instrumental component. This curated truth—the selective provision of accurate information that favors the sender's political position—distorts the information environment through a channel not targeted by current policy interventions focused on false content.