Related papers: Influential News and Policy-making
In this paper, we present a resource allocation mechanism for the problem of incentivizing filtering among a finite number of strategic social media platforms. We consider the presence of a strategic government and private knowledge of how…
This paper provides a simple theoretical framework to evaluate the effect of key parameters of ranking algorithms, namely popularity and personalization parameters, on measures of platform engagement, misinformation and polarization. The…
We develop a model of electoral accountability with mainstream and alternative media. In addition to regular high- and low-competence types, the incumbent may be an aspiring autocrat who controls the mainstream media and will subvert…
Since 2016, the amount of academic research with the keyword "misinformation" has more than doubled [2]. This research often focuses on article headlines shown in artificial testing environments, yet misinformation largely spreads through…
What role do non-elected bureaucrats play when elections provide imperfect accountability and create incentives for pandering? We develop a model where politicians and bureaucrats interact to implement policy. Both can either be good,…
In this paper we study the impact of news media and public surveys on the electoral campaigns for political competitions. We present an agent-based model that addresses the effective influence of surveys in orienting the opinions of voters…
The concept of truth, as a public good is the production of a collective understanding, which emerges from a complex network of social interactions. The recent impact of social networks on shaping the perception of truth in political arena…
Research in combating misinformation reports many negative results: facts may not change minds, especially if they come from sources that are not trusted. Individuals can disregard and justify lies told by trusted sources. This problem is…
We study candidates' positioning when adjustments are possible in response to new information about voters' preferences. Re-positioning allows candidates to get closer to the median voter but is costly both financially and electorally. We…
This paper provides partial identification of various binary choice models with misreported dependent variables. We propose two distinct approaches by exploiting different instrumental variables respectively. In the first approach, the…
We compare two scenarios in a model where politicians offer local public goods to heterogeneous voters: one where politicians have access to data on voters and thus can target specific ones, and another where politicians only decide on the…
The problem of how to effectively mitigate the flow of misinformation remains a significant challenge. The classical approach to this is public disapproval of claims or "debunking." The approach is still widely used on social media, but it…
Fake news is a growing problem in developing countries with potentially far-reaching consequences. We conduct a randomized experiment in urban Pakistan to evaluate the effectiveness of two educational interventions to counter misinformation…
We develop new voting mechanisms for the case when voters and candidates are located in an arbitrary unknown metric space, and the goal is to choose a candidate minimizing social cost: the total distance from the voters to this candidate.…
In recent years, scholars have raised concerns on the effects that unreliable news, or "fake news," has on our political sphere, and our democracy as a whole. For example, the propagation of fake news on social media is widely believed to…
Presidential debates are viewed as providing an important public good by revealing information on candidates to voters. We consider an endogenous model of presidential debates in which an incumbent and a challenger (who is privately…
We develop a model of content filtering as a game between the filter and the content consumer, where the latter incurs information costs for examining the content. Motivating examples include censoring misinformation, spam/phish filtering,…
We investigate how crises alter societies by analyzing the timing and channels of change using a longitudinal multi-wave survey of a representative sample of Americans throughout 2020. This methodology allows us to overcome some of the…
Online crowdfunding has received a great deal of attention from entrepreneurs and policymakers as a promising avenue to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation. A notable aspect of this shift from an offline to an online setting is that…
We examine the effects of introducing a political outsider to the nomination process leading to an election. To this end, we develop a sequential game where politicians -- insiders and outsiders -- make a platform offer to a party, and…