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It’s the End of the World and They Know It: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2018

Calvert W. Jones Open the ORCID record for Calvert W. Jones [Opens in a new window]  and
Celia Paris
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Abstract

Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radical—especially violent—forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fiction’s effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously.

Type
Special Section Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 969 - 989
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

†The authors are co-equal contributors to this study and are listed in alphabetical order.

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HM5XCO.

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Supplementary material: Link

Jones and Paris Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HM5XCO
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