Media credibility and voter penalisation of exposed corrupt politicians in Latin America: a study focused on social media and sustained lack of freedom of expression

The media landscape in Latin America is changing due to two influential factors. Firstly, freedom of expression has diminished for the past ten years and is projected to continue declining. Secondly, social media is rising as one of the most popular media channels to inform oneself about politics. This paper explores the consequences these trends have on the credibility audiences attribute to news exposing corrupt politicians and their willingness to penalise the exposed politicians in elections. The study focuses on ten Latin American cities and employs a randomised control trial using experimental data embedded in a survey. Through this method, credibility and penalisation levels are compared between state communications, newspapers, journalists on social media, and anonymous journalists on social media. The paper’s key findings demonstrate that corruption reports published on social media are deemed less credible than those published by state auditors and newspapers. This effect is exacerbated when the source of the report is anonymous. In addition, corruption reports published on social media by anonymous sources have a negative effect on voter penalisation of corrupt politicians. Also, sustained lack of freedom of expression has a negative effect on the credibility attributed to state communications. Finally, lower levels of education have a negative effect on credibility attributed to social media, while higher political sophistication decreases the credibility and the voter penalisation attributed to reports published on social media anonymously.