Fact check: This is not really a post-fact election; Washington Post, 10/7/16

Alexios Mantzarlis, Washington Post; Fact check: This is not really a post-fact election:

"Unique visitors to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker were up 477 percent year-over-year in July, and up again in August. NPR recorded the highest traffic in the history of its website thanks to its live fact-checking of the first presidential debate. At least 6 million people had checked out the annotated transcript by the next morning. PolitiFact racked up 3.5 million page views in the 24 hours after that debate, drawing more traffic in one day than it did in entire months during the 2012 presidential campaign.

So voters want more fact-checking. But is it making any difference? Do people change their minds when faced with a fact check that surprises them, or do they internalize only fact checks that suit their own biases? Our understanding of basic psychology suggests that fact checks are often read with a partisan eye.

Often, but not always. A new working paper by Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Jason Reifler of Exeter University, who have studied fact-checking extensively, indicates that readers can learn from fact checks."