© Brian Cahn/Zuma Press/TNS Fox News host Sean Hannity addresses the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention, on Feb. 27, 2017, in Orlando, Fla.

CHICAGO — A new study published by the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics makes a claim that will strike many as incendiary: “Greater viewership of ‘Hannity’ relative to ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic,” says the paper.

The working paper is called “Misinformation During a Pandemic,” and it derives from the authors’ finding that Carlson and Sean Hannity, the two most popular hosts on the right-wing Fox News Network, initially treated coronavirus very differently.

“Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February,” Leonardo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago and his co-authors Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, and David Yanagizawa-Drott wrote in the paper released Sunday evening.

An analysis of show transcripts was conducted to document what the authors conclude are the significant differences in the hosts’ handling of the topic early on. For example, the paper cites a Feb. 27 Hannity transcript in which the host states, “And today, thankfully, zero people in the United States of America have died from the coronavirus. Zero.” Two days earlier, Carlson was telling his viewers that it was possible a million people could die in the U.S. from it.

From there, the authors commissioned a poll to determine how Fox News viewers responded to the coronavirus threat, and they also analyzed county-by-county viewership patterns and COVID-19 infection and death numbers.

The more than 1,000 Fox viewers surveyed said they were much more likely to have changed their behavior before March 1 in response to the threat “if they watched Tucker,” said Yanagizawa-Drott, who teaches at the University of Zurich. “And if they watched Hannity, they’re much more likely to change behavior after March 1.”

As the paper put it, “We find that Hannity’s viewers on average changed their behavior in response to the coronavirus five days later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior three days earlier than other Fox News viewers.”

But it’s in the county analysis where the authors arrive at their strongest conclusion, that there were more COVID-19 cases and deaths in places where there is a preference for watching Hannity over Carlson compared to places where the opposite is true.

“Already by mid March we see a statistically significant difference, that there are greater case loads in places that favor Hannity over Tucker,” Yanagizawa-Drott said. “Then weeks later, we see a similar trajectory increase for deaths.”

Comparing areas with a meaningful viewership difference on March 14, for instance, they found “approximately 30% more cases” of people contracting the disease in Hannity-favoring areas versus Carlson-favoring areas, he said. Two weeks later, he said, they found roughly the same difference in the number of deaths in those areas.

But, says the paper, “the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity’s shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert.”

A Fox News representative did not have an immediate comment in response to the study. The network has pointed to Hannity’s late January interview with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci to argue that his viewers were receiving accurate coronavirus information.

Hannity, in an interview with Newsweek after 74 journalism professors in an open letter criticized Fox News Channel’s coronavirus coverage as “a danger to public health,” cited the Fauci interview his show did and said his website contains evidence that he did take coronavirus seriously.

“We are, of course, aware of the broader political climate in the U.S. and the political debate,” said Yanagizawa-Drott. “And of course, it’s all during a pandemic where tensions are high in general.”

But the point, the authors said, was to have their study join a growing body of research about the impact media can have on public behavior. Publishing a “working paper,” they said, is standard practice in economics, a precursor to peer review and publication in a professional journal.

“I think we’re being very careful in the paper,” said Yanagizawa-Drott. “We’re studying this differential viewership to answer the fundamental question for us, which is, Does the information matter early on in a pandemic like this for health outcomes and behavior? And that’s what we can, I think, provide some evidence for.”

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