Capitol Hill Buzz: Polishing senators' images on Wikipedia
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press
Sep 3, 2015 10:44 AM CDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Now we know how some Senate staffers keep busy during Congress' summer recess.

A new study monitored the Wikipedia pages of U.S. senators and found that negative facts added to their biographies were deleted much faster than positive facts.

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that can be edited by its millions of users. There have been many documented cases of congressional staffers sprucing up their boss's biographies on Wikipedia. The website even has an entry dedicated to the subject.

The study didn't determine who removed the negative facts, but it did track how long it took for the information to be deleted.

The study was done by two political scientists, one at the University of California and one at Yale University. It was published on the website, PLOS ONE.

In the summer and fall of 2014 — right before congressional elections — researchers gathered two verifiable facts about each senator that were not already on their Wikipedia pages. One fact was complimentary and the other was negative.

Researchers then added the facts to senators' Wikipedia pages and tracked whether they were removed.

An example of positive information used by researchers: During the government shutdown in 2013, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., donated about $8,000 of her salary to North Dakota charities.

An example of negative information: The Annenberg Public Policy Center (Factcheck.org) has accused Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., of lying to voters by insisting that if they liked their health insurance plan, they would be able to keep it.

The results: Negative facts were 36 percent more likely to be removed within 12 hours and 29 percent more likely to be removed within three days.

"We find strong evidence of an editorial bias toward positivity," the study said.

The results were consistent across party lines, for longtime senators and newer ones, for those from big states and those from small states.

But when researchers did the experiment on former senators who no longer held public office, they found that positive and negative facts were removed at about the same rate.

"Our findings suggest the editorial bias is limited to active politicians, the types of people for whom the stakes of a positive public image are the highest," the study said.

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Online:

The study: http://tinyurl.com/opp86st

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